Search Marketing 101: Home Pages that Drive You to Take Action

Aug 6, 2010

NOTE: If you like this post, check out the follow-up: More Great Home Pages that Drive You to Take Action

Your website’s home page is the center of your online sales and marketing universe. Design your home page so that it compels users to take action – action that is perfectly aligned with your key business goals: Buy Now, Learn More, Subscribe, Follow, Like, Share.

Here are a few examples of home pages that do this well. If you know of others, share them here!

PipelineDeals

The PipelineDeals home page tells you everything you need to know about the service at a glance. There are no blocks of text for you to get hung up on, only links that act like headlines, actual headlines (“Simple & Powerful Tools for Your Sales Team”), bullets, key info and eye-catching stuff like “iPhone Edition” and “$15/mo.” . Blocks of text aren’t bad, necessarily, but if you are going to have them, optimize them for search engines and put them below the fold.

There’s an important relationship between a web page and the way that it’s listed in search results. For search engine optimization, you want to be sure to have a compelling “HTML page title tag”. The title tag should use keywords people actually use to search and that describe what the web page is about. On the PipelineDeals home page, the title tag looks like this:

<title>Sales Tracking and Online CRM Software – PipelineDeals is Simple CRM</title>

This is an excellent title tag. Great keywords at the beginning of the title tag, and a branding statement that contains the name of the business and a keyword (“Simple CRM”). PipelineDeals ranks well in Google for “sales tracking software” and it’s on page 2 of Google for “online crm software”, which is a competitive keyword. With a little more SEO work, they can get to page 1 for this keyword. Getting from page 2 to page 1 can be HUGE in terms of the amount of traffic: at least a 10-fold increase or more in some cases. Given that PipelineDeals is very near the top of page 2, this is a perfect example of low hanging fruit.

Something else to look for is the meta description tag, which, like the title tag, is not visible on the web page when viewed in a browser. It’s an important part of the HTML, though, and you can see it if you View > Source Code in your browser while you are on the page. The meta description is what shows under the HTML page title on search engine results pages. It has little to no impact on your search ranking. Instead, it’s an opportunity to use a pitch that reads like ad copy to get people to click and go to your site. If a page doesn’t have a description, Google makes one for you using text it finds on the page. Sometimes this is good, sometimes not. Here’s the PipelineDeals description.

<meta name=”description” content=”Sell more today with PipelineDeals. Organize, track and manage your deals, leads and contacts in our affordable online CRM, sales tracking and lead organization software. (866) 702-7303″ />

This description is cut off at 151 characters when shown in Google SERPs. So it looks like:

“Sell more today with PipelineDeals. Organize, track and manage your deals, leads and contacts in our affordable online CRM, sales tracking and lead …”

This is pretty good “ad-like” copy, but it would be more effective if it were cut to 160 characters or less. Finish that thought!

Jobfully
This home page sports a great headline: “Jobfully. A Revolutionary Job Site for Today’s Job Seekers.”

Nice look and feel, too. Video is front and center. Do you think the video does what it should to compel users to action?

Here’s the HTML title tag for the home page: <title>Jobfully</title>
This title tag is good for one thing: people searching for the word “Jobfully”, otherwise it’s useless, a major missed opportunity. Compare it to the PipelineDeals title tag.

Room for improvement:
In terms of SEO, there is a lot of room for improvement on the home page, and throughout the site. HTML title tags on every page all nearly as weak as that on the home page, and every page on the site lacks a meta description tag, including the home page.

If users want more information about the three parts of the Jobfully value proposition (productivity suite, coaching and community) they should be able to click the eye-catching icons to read more. The testimonials are intended to be read as more information about each of these areas, but no one reads testimonials when they are this long and dense. Instead of long testimonials, the home page needs short, compelling “ad-copy”-style text. Not only that, real testimonials lack the keyword focus that is needed on a home page.

Another SEO principle that could be put to use here is to link from the home page to internal pages on the site. These internal pages should focus on – and be search engine optimized for – each of the three parts of the value proposition.

It’s also vital to use actual HTML text in the three boxes, with words like “job search productivity suite” being used as “anchor text” in links to their respective internal pages. Right now that “text” is literally a part of the image that’s used for the box. It’s essentially invisible to search engines. Even if the boxes themselves were  links, this would not be nearly as effective for SEO as actual text links.

Gist
Great look and feel. Love the giant yellow “Sign Up” button.

<title>Gist – Connected People Change History</title>
Catchy HTML title tag, but there are no keywords in it, nor does it say what Gist does. Missed opportunity here on several counts.

<meta name=”Description” content=”Gist provides the only full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, status updates, and work details.”/>
This description is better than the old completely generic description that was there a few months ago: “A startup focused on delivering real user value and rapidly iterating based on customer input.”
However, the new one is 188 characters. It will be cut off at 160 or less. It needs to be succinct and compelling.

If you have ideas about what makes an effective home page, or you agree or disagree with any of this, I’d love to hear it.

5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress

Jun 21, 2010

On June 12, I had the great pleasure of presenting at WordCamp Vancouver. Duane Storey and the rest of the organizers did an awesome job. The conference was a big hit. If you get the chance, definitely check it out next year.

My presentation was called “Get Found Easier and Grow Your Business: 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress”. Thirty minutes is just about enough time to get through the essentials of SEO for WordPress, although I’m sure it could be a two-hour presentation without too much trouble.

Half of the time does not involve using WordPress! I do a quick overview of what a keyword is, how to pick a good keyword, how to check your initial search ranking, and, after optimizing, how to see if your optimization efforts had any effect!

Understanding keywords is absolutely critical to search optimization, but it’s not often talked about in a way that most people can get. This is going to have to change as more businesses use WordPress and other CMS solutions for websites and then decide that they need to do their own SEO.

The 5 Tips for Better SEO are spelled out in the presentation slide deck below. They are also available in PDF form here (right click and select “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…” to download).

5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress (PDF)

At the end of the slides and the PDF, there are links to SEO Plugins, Tools and Resources. If you would like the .pptx file of  the presentation – including the Notes – contact me.

Here are the 5 Tips for Better Search Engine Optimization with WordPress in case you want a quick overview:

Tip #1: Use keywords in your HTML page title

Tip #2: Write a page description that makes people want to read more (include keywords)

Tip #3: Customize permalinks

Tip #4: Use keywords in the visible page

Tip #4 continued: Make content “sticky”, useful, a resource

Tip #5: Links

How to Host Video with WordPress: Advantages of YouTube vs. Self-Hosted

May 17, 2010

I was talking with a client about Social Media Marketing and ways to host video on a WordPress site. If your WordPress website is self-hosted, you have plenty of options. I won’t even begin to go into the many video plugins for WordPress. That is a different topic. But when it comes to video hosting, there a lot of reasons to use YouTube rather than anything else. Visit the McBuzz YouTube Channel here.

Because uploading and inserting images is so easy with WordPress, you might think that video should be simple in the same way. But because you need a video player – which is complicated – and video files are typically quite large (unless they are converted to Flash and compressed), there are lots of factors that make handling video different than handling images.

[Click on the image above right for larger view. The screen shot shows Google search results for "introduction to wordpress dashboard". Google Universal Search Results feature video, images and other kinds of content along with the standard text listings for web pages. Here video thumbnails appear near the top of the results. The McBuzz Business Blogging 101 tutorial featuring the same video is at the bottom of the results page. Two listings for the price of one!
   Click on the image below right for larger view. Similar results for "wordpress static page". This time, video thumbnails are at the bottom of the page, and Business Blogging 101 is at the top.]

WordPress makes it super easy to embed a video when you use the URL from YouTube or a similar hosting service like Vimeo or VodPod. These other services are as easy to use as YouTube, but YouTube is the best easy solution for lots of other reasons. Unless, for some reason, you want complete control over your videos and you want to limit access to them or keep them out of the Google Index altogether, there are many good reasons to use YouTube or a similar service as a host for your video files. In terms of search engine visibility, these services – and especially YouTube – are far superior to hosting video on your own server.

Here are 10 reasons why YouTube is the best choice for WordPress video hosting:

1. YouTube is free.
2. YouTube works with many file formats and converts those files into several different sizes of Flash movie, including HD. If someone has HD capability on their computer or other device, they can watch in HD, otherwise they can watch at a lower resolution. Creating these options on your own would be time-consuming and require special software and skills.
3. You can add unique, keyword-rich titles and descriptions for every video you upload.
4. Your YouTube account itself is great for your personal visibility and for your business.
5. In many cases, YouTube searches exceed the number of Google searches as a source of viewer traffic for your videos. That traffic will, in turn, see your YouTube profile and you can do a lot on your profile and in the video descriptions to encourage visitors to go to your main website.
6. Google owns YouTube; they pay very close attention to content on YouTube.
7. As part of “Google Universal Search Results“, video thumbnails often appear on search results pages independent of other search results, this means you have a better chance of being found in Google results when you keep video on YouTube. It’s possible to get a standard search result listing along with a video thumbnail or image thumbnail listing, so you get multiple listings on the same search results page.
8. People will pick up and embed your videos in their own website or blog. This is great for inbound links and for increasing traffic to your site because you can include a URL in the video description as well as a URL that displays at the beginning or end of your videos. (Branding your videos is very important for this reason. Sometimes I do a good job at this, sometimes not. Here’s one example I’m happy with: Installing WordPress on BlueHost)
9. YouTube gives you fairly comprehensive stats (YouTube calls these viewer analytics “Insight”) over time regarding how many people watch your videos, how they found them (via YouTube search, a search engine, direct link, etc.), their demographics and so forth. You won’t get any of that if you host your own videos.
10. Many web hosts will charge you an additional fee for the increased bandwidth and server space demands you put on their servers when you host your own video. Whether or not they have fees, they may limit the bandwidth and space you are allowed for large files like video.

What is Universal Search? How Do I Optimize for Universal Search?

Feb 8, 2010

Several readers have asked, What is Universal Search and how do I optimize for it?

Click to enlarge

Universal Search, also called “Blended Search”, refers to the search results offered today by Google and others on their search engine results pages (SERPs) – pages like the one at right. Rather than simply listing links to web pages as they did four or five years ago, SERPs now display results for other media. These can include Image results, News results and Video results.

Optimizing for Universal Search means doing things (ethical things) to get your links to rank highly for a particular keyword.

Let Universal Search guide the way you do search engine optimization:

• In order to be competitive in Universal Search, you need to have content on multiple web sites, not just your own website, but also YouTube (and other video sites), product sites like Google Base, News sites and others.
• You need to better optimize the images on all your web properties if you want them to show up in Universal Search results.
• If you optimize well, you can get more than one result – sometimes 3 or 4 – showing up on page one of Google SERPs.

Click to enlarge

In the SERP at left, you can see mcbuzz.wordpress.com in positions 1 and 2 for a search on “upload pdf wordpress”, and you can also see an image from a McBuzz video tutorial (bottom right) on the same page. The listing in position 2 and the video image are the essentially the same content. One link is to a blog post with the video embedded in it. The other is to the video itself on YouTube. And, although the video is not at the top of the page, people are more likely to click on the graphical video image than they are on a plain text listing.

This is the beauty of Universal Search: the potential for more listings, and listings with images. Add to this the fact that your competitors are probably not optimizing very well for Universal Search – not yet, anyway – and you see why it’s important to know about it, and to turn that knowledge into action.

In the next post, I’ll talk about how to optimize for Universal Search.

Click here to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services offered by McBuzz.

Search Engine Optimization for Your Blog

May 14, 2009

If you’re looking for search engine optimization tips for your blog, check out this interview by Shawn Hessinger at PostRanger.com: McBuzz talks Search Engine Optimization for your blog

PostRanger.com provides professional blogging services to market your business or organization on the World Wide Web.

Adding a blog to an existing website is one of the best and least expensive ways to improve the overall search ranking of your web pages! With help from companies like PostRanger.com and McBuzz Communications, you can’t go wrong!

How to See If a Page or Document on Your Website Has Been Indexed by Google

Mar 13, 2008

If you would like to find out if a page or document on your website has been indexed by Google, use the query modifier “site:url” like you would to see how many pages on your site have been indexed (and which ones), but instead of using “site:mcbuzz.com”, for example, use “site:mcbuzz.com/wordpress/what-is-wordpress” or whatever the entire URL or file name is that you want to check.

Click here » to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services offered by McBuzz.

In other words, say I have a PDF on my site called “mcbuzz-wordpress-tutorials.pdf” (which I don’t – this is just an example). I can do a search using Google for “site:mcbuzz.com/pdf/mcbuzz-wordpress-tutorials.pdf” and Google will tell me whether is has this file in its index or not. Remember to use the entire path or URL for the page or document. If you keep your PDFs in a directory on your site called “pdf”, then you need to include that in the URL as shown in this example. (If you have quesitons about this, send me a comment.)

This post follows along the same lines as an earlier one called “Are PDF Files Indexed by Google?” But I also wanted to talk about this topic for a couple of reasons related to Search Engine Optimization and WordPress.

1. In WordPress, it is possible to specify the URL of a page or post — independent of the title you give the page or post — using the “Page Slug” / “Post Slug” feature. If you don’t specify a slug, WordPress will make one automatically using “Permalinks“. I told WordPress to give this post the URL “mcbuzz.com/2008/document-webpage-indexed-by-google”. If I hadn’t done so, WordPress would have called it “mcbuzz.com/2008/how-to-see-if-a-page-or-document-on-your-website-has-been-indexed-by-google”. Shorter is better as long as the relevant keywords are included in a URL, so I made it shorter by tweaking it a bit and removing words I don’t think are as relevant for SEO as the ones I kept.

2. Google is indexing pages and posts very quickly these days, sometimes in under an hour. The post you are reading right now was indexed in less than 7 minutes. If you have a URL indexed by Google, you may not want to change it because if you change it, the link to the page that’s in Google’s index will be broken. Someone might find your page or post by doing a Google search, but when they click on the listing, they will get a “Page not found” error from your site.

So, if you want to use the Page Slug / Post Slug feature in WordPress to customize your URLs, do so before or shortly after you publish a page or post. If you are thinking of changing a URL, you can check to see if your page has already been indexed before you change it.

If it has been indexed, you need to weigh the possible long-term SEO benefit of changing the URL so that it is more likely to show up on page 1 or 2 of Google for your target keywords — because Google will eventually re-index it. But if it has been indexed already and you want people to find it for some searches right away (in the next week or two, say) then you are probably better off leaving well enough alone.

Here’s an update to this post. News flash: That last paragraph applies only to WordPress.com-hosted websites and blogs. If your site is hosted by a third party rather than WordPress.com, and you are comfortable enough with WordPress to be able to download, install and activate a WordPress plugin (or you know someone who can help you do so), then you don’t need to worry about whether a post or page has already been indexed by Google or not. You can use a WordPress plugin called “Redirection” to redirect someone to the new URL when they request your page or post using the old URL.

In other words, say you create a post called My New Post with the URL http://www.example.com/my-new-post/. It gets indexed by Google in 30 minutes or whatever. Then you realize, Oops!, I should have named that post My New Post About WordPress, because it’s about WordPress! And you really should include “wordpress” in the URL to make the URL more search engine friendly, i.e., to let search engines know that the post really is about WordPress. One of the absolute best ways to do that is to put your keyword — in this case “wordpress” — in the URL. So go ahead, rename your post and either create a new post slug yourself or let WordPress do it for you.

Now your new URL can be http://www.example.com/my-new-post-about-wordpress/ (or whatever you want to make it using the Page Slug /Post Slug feature in the editing window). If someone finds your post using Google, and Google is still using the old URL, that person will click on the link and when their web browser asks your host’s server for the page at http://www.example.com/my-new-post/ , the server will know that they really want the page at the new URL http://www.example.com/my-new-post-about-wordpress/ and it will redirect them there. The fact that you changed the post title and the URL will not keep people from being able to find the page. Pretty cool.

Now for this to work, you have to know how to install the Redirection plugin, and how to set it so that it does what you want. And you also have to be using permalinks. (Read more about WordPress permalinks here.) I just installed the plugin on mcbuzz.com, at it’s one of the easier plugins to use. Just follow the directions in the readme.txt file that comes with the plugin. You can set it to create redirections automatically when a post slug changes, or you can do it yourself manually when a post or page slug changes.

Confused? Just send me a comment using the form below.

Are PDF Files Indexed by Google?

Jan 30, 2008

Yes. PDF files are indexed by Google and other search engines.

Following up on a question from a reader (Optimize PDF Files For Websites and Search Engines), as I note there, one way to see if a PDF on your website has been indexed by Google is to copy a long line of text from the PDF, and then put it into the Google search box — with double quotes on either end. You can do this to find any particular document or page available on the Web — as long as it has been indexed (scanned or “spidered” and catalogued) by Google.

For example, if you Google “Enter an estimate of your 2008 nonwage income (such as dividends or interest)” with the double quotes on either end, Google offers you a link to a PDF of IRS Form W-4 for 2008. This shows that the 2008 W-4 PDF document has been indexed. (Incidentally, Google also offers you a link to the mcbuzz.com page you are reading right now since it contains the same string of text.)

Another way to see if a PDF has been indexed by Google is to use the “site:url” query modifier. This is a handy trick when you want to narrow your search to one domain. If I Google [site:mcbuzz.com] – without the brackets, Google lists every page in my site that has been indexed. If I Google [site:mcbuzz.com web] – without the brackets, Google lists every page in my site that contains the word “web”. And, as a helpful reader points out below, you can Google [site:mcbuzz.com filetype:pdf] – without the brackets, to see if there are any PDF files on the mcbuzz.com website that have been indexed by Google. (Be sure not to put a space between “filetype:” and “pdf”.)

I don’t have any PDFs on my site. Try it with another domain to see an actual positive result. To see if a particular PDF on my website has been indexed, I can Google [site:mcbuzz.com "some word or phrase in the PDF"] – without the brackets. Of course, you can also Google [site:mcbuzz.com myfilename.pdf] to do the same.

Returning to the Form W-4 example, Google [site:irs.gov "Enter an estimate of your 2008 nonwage income (such as dividends or interest)"] and Google lists one and only one result: the PDF on the IRS website.

Something fairly amazing: Google knows every phrase in that PDF and in any other document or web page it has indexed. That’s a lot of information.

The other question in the mcbuzz.com post mentioned above was whether a PDF would be indexed if it were encrypted or had other security settings applied to it. If you have Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional, you can answer this question yourself.

Open a PDF and then open the Document Properties dialog box (File > Properties…). Click on the Security tab, and you see the various security options. There are different security options depending on which version of Acrobat Reader you want your PDF to be compatible with. The dialog box tells you if search engines will be able to read all or only some parts of the PDF (e.g. metatags or attachments) when you select the various options. If the PDF can’t be read by search engines, it won’t be indexed.

For those interested, here is more information about Google query modifiers like “site:url”.

Click here » if you would like to find out about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services offered by McBuzz.

Natural Search Results vs. Paid Search Results – What’s the Difference?

Oct 23, 2007

Here are examples of “natural” or “organic” search results vs. “paid” search results on Google:

The orange boxes indicate paid search results. Google marks these as Sponsored Links. Sponsored Links always appear at the top or on the right side of search results pages. Businesses pay Google to be listed here. These are also called text advertisements, “paid placement” ads or “pay per click” ads.

The green box indicates a natural (also called “organic”) search results listing. As of today, October 23, 2007,  McBuzz is at the top of local search results for “seattle marketing communications”. McBuzz does not pay Google to appear in this spot.

It’s worth noting that since this post was created, Google has done away with local search listings for “seattle marketing communications”, and McBuzz is no longer featured in this top position. Try “adwords consultant seattle” instead.

Yahoo! and MSN.com search results pages have a similar format — with both paid and natural search listings.

Google Indexes Pages Much More Frequently Than Before
Here’s an interesting sidebar. I created the post you are reading right now at 10:16 AM today, October 23. Looking at the Google search results page just now (at 10:30 PM the same day), I see that this post has already been indexed by Google, meaning that it shows up on page one (in the number 10 spot at the bottom of the page) for the same keyword.

Why is this important? Because it shows just how quickly new content on your website can affect its performance in search results.

The post you are reading right now was indexed by Google and listed on page one of serch results for “seattle marketing communications” the same day it was created! What does this tell us? When you apply basic search engine optimization techniques — including making frequent updates to your site with keyword-rich headlines, bullet points and text — you can see immediate results and bring in more customers.

You may recall the days when you had to wait three to four weeks, sometimes longer, for updates to your website to show up in search engine results pages. If you optimized your site, it might take at least that long to find out if what you did worked or not.

As this example shows, those days are long gone — provided you are doing the right things with your website. And that’s a significant qualification. What are the right things? Exactly what we talk about on mcbuzz.com, like following our Web Marketing Tips — and the fact that you should use content managment or “blogging” software like WordPress to build and maintain your site rather than old-fashioned, “static” format HTML. (The latter includes sites created with do-it-yourself, “site builder” tools you find on GoDaddy.com, Network Solutions and Yahoo! web hosting.)

Let me know what you think!

McBuzz Web Marketing Tips
#1: Use “site:url” to Find Out If Your Website Is Indexed by Google

#2: Use XML Sitemap Generator to Get All Your Website’s Pages Indexed by Google

#3: Submit an XML Sitemap to Google

#4: Use Keywords in Web Page Titles

Google and John Chow: Rewarding Useful Content, Punishing Link Buying

Jul 12, 2007

Google is working hard to deter webmasters and bloggers who use underhanded tactics to improve their site’s rank in Google search results pages. There is an interesting discussion about this on the Pronet Advertising blog: Why We Rank #1 for ‘John Chow’ and Why You Shouldn’t Mess With Google.

Here’s the bottom line, a great quote from Amrit Hallan:

People spend so much time trying to outsmart the search engines. If they spent the same time, and energy, on actually building the quality of their websites or blogs, it’d be a lot more beneficial to them, and to their readers.

This is true because Google is doing a good job determining what “underhanded” means in the context of search engine optimization. John Chow is a successful blogger who has been paying others to create links (“paid links”) from their sites to his blog in order to improve his ranking in Google and other search engines.

Part of the debate hinges on whether Google is right to say that buying links — instead of encouraging other sites to link to a site by creating useful content, fostering relationships with other bloggers & webmasters, etc. — is underhanded or “black hat”.

Google offers a fair amount of explanation for its practices. Read more here: My site’s ranking in Google

And, in particular, check out Why should I report paid links to Google?