Archive for November, 2010

November
26

Definitive Linking Guide of 2010

The biggest complaint about my Google Best Practices guide is that it doesn’t have enough information about how to get links. Well, that’s because getting links is an in-depth process and needed its own guide to full explain the correct process.

The guide is 88 pages, and just like my guide on Google, this one gets to the point and gives plenty of examples so you can take action today on your site and start seeing your rankings improve. Here are some of the concepts I cover:

  • Linking Myths Exposed
  • The Truth about Paid Links
  • How to Track Your Competitor’s Links
  • How to Use Link Baiting Effectively
  • Which Tools to Use and Why
  • I routinely build sites with over 100,000 links and the methods I use are the same in this guide. Does it take work? Of course. But the payoff is incredible. These methods are tested and proven.

    The guide is $97 and comes with free lifetime updates, just as my Google Best Practices Guide does. It also comes with a full money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy. Just like my Google guide, the information isn’t watered down, I don’t waste your time and the methods will require work from you, but they work and work very well.

November
22

Making a Non-Mobile Site Mobile Friendly

Question: What market is going to grow in double digits through 2014?
Answer: The mobile market.

Next Question: Do you have a mobile presence?
Answer: If you have a “regular” website you also have a mobile presence.

That’s right: your existing site is a player in the mobile market, but chances are it’s not too mobile friendly. So, what easy changes can you make right now to better serve a mobile market? Keep reading and we’ll walk you through some.

How Desktop and Mobile Sites Differ

Mobile Site:

  • Coded specifically for smaller mobile browsers. The most common languages for mobile sites are: cHTML (compressed HTML), XHTML Basic 1.1 XHTML MP 1.2 and WML 1.3 (wireless markup language).
  • Less page content
  • Fewer images
  • Less navigation
  • Designed with specific user-tasks in mind

Desktop Site:

  • Designed to be viewed on a desktop/laptop computer
  • More images
  • More content
  • Flash
  • More navigation

Mobile Searches Return Non-Mobile Pages
Google dominates mobile search leaving Bing and Yahoo! with about 2% of that market, so we’re going to focus on Google SERPs only. Google has a unique bot for mobile sites (Mobile Bot), but not a different index. The pages (mobile vs. non-mobile) are just treated differently. Due to the lack of mobile specific pages, Google is “borrowing” desktop sites for mobile SERPs. That means if you don’t have a dedicated mobile page, you’ll still show up in mobile searches.

desktop-vs-mobile-browsers

Google is about relevancy, so if a non-mobile page is the best result it will rank for now. Google will also adapt your desktop page to render in a mobile browser. Many desktop pages render decently in mobile browsers, but issues include overlapping navigation, non-functioning flash, pop up windows that cause browsing issues, and a page width that requires too much scrolling.

Does This Browser Make My Site Look Big?
View your desktop pages in a mobile emulator so you can see how it looks on different smartphones screen sizes/browsers. Compare this to the PC version of your site.
Mobile Phone Emulator is an excellent tool that lets you view pages on different screen sizes for different mobile phones/browsers. It shows you a working version of your site in mobile form. Click the links and navigate your site just as a mobile user would.

Easy changes to make your site mobile friendly.
After viewing your pages on different platforms you’ll begin to see page changes you can make that will improve mobile browsing without hurting desktop browsing. These may include:

  • Eliminating pop ups.
  • Creating front-loading content (like a journalist). Think of information like a triangle. Most important “need to know content” at the top, followed by second most important information, etc.
  • Larger font–less text.
  • Fewer images.
  • Cleaner navigation–less navigation.
  • Avoiding frames.
  • Continuing to improve page speed. This is very important with mobile devices.
  • Adding contact information, maps, directions, hours of operation.
  • Limiting long heading tags.
  • Avoiding flash.
  • Thinking of what a mobile user–on the go–would be using the page for.
  • Optimizing for tasks.
  • Shorten meta descriptions if possible.

Plug-In and Mobilize Your WordPress Blog
If you run WordPress sites that aren’t rendering well, the following plugins will create a clean mobile version.

  • WP Touch: If you’re site is a WordPress blog which doesn’t convert well in mobile browsers, install the WPTouch plugin. This will turn your blog into a very clean and organized app-style theme for iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch visitors (user agents Android, CUPCAKE, bada, blackberry9500, blackberry9520, blackberry9530, blackberry9550, blackberry9800, dream, iPhone, iPod, incognito, s8000, webOS, webmate). WPTouch will also put AdSense for mobile ads in your posts when you customize those settings. Takes just a couple minutes to set up.
  • WordPress Mobile Pack: The WordPress Mobile Pack automatically detects when a visitor is on a mobile device and switches to a mobile theme. This toolkit has a barcode and mobile ad widget and mobile analytics.

Your Mobile SERPs
Use the Google Mobile Search page or the XHTML version and compare mobile SERPs vs. desktop SERPs for your important keyword phrases.

Redirecting Mobile Visitors
Now that you’ve seen what your site looks like in the mobile browser and what’s ranking in SERPs, you may want to redirect mobile visitors to a different (but similar) page. You can do that by adding the following to the head section.


<link rel=”alternate” media=”handheld” href=”redirectedpage.htm” />

Click to Call
Mobile users tend to seek information now–that they’re going to act on now. For example, finding a restaurant or shop nearby.
Make your contact information visible and clickable. Link phone numbers so mobile users can “click to call.” Use the following HTML on your phone numbers.


<a href=”tel:1-800-123-4567″>800-123-4567</a>

Replace the example phone number with your own and don’t leave out the “1″ before your area code. I left it out of the actual anchor text, but you can include it there too.

Be More Accessible: Go Local
Mobile is very much about local, so make sure you register with local sites.

The following are just a few tips for making your site more mobile friendly, until you have a dedicated mobile site up. Until then, remember to have contact information visible and easily accessible, keep the design clean and quick to load, and develop a local presence.

November
11

Google Adds Visual Search to SERPs

It’s called Google Instant Previews and it’s a way for searchers to preview an image of your site before clicking through the SERPs. What does this mean for SEOs? It means that page layout and design can now play a roll in getting the click through.

Let’s take a look at how this works by searching “sweet potato recipes” in Google.

Activating Instant Previews

In the SERPs, you should see a magnifying glass icon next to each title. If not, turn Google Instant on. Once the icon is clicked it activates Instant Previews for the duration of that keyword search, even when you move on to page 2, 3, etc. Just scroll down the results and the Preview image for that specific site will appear in a pop out window to the right.

Check out the #4 ranking site in the image below: Southern Food at About.com. The title sounds good, but before we click through, let’s take a look at the actual page.

Instant Previews Lacking Images Example

Now that I’ve seen a preview of the site I’ve made a definite decision about the click through: not going to happen. Why? Like most searchers, I had an idea of what I wanted before the search started. In this case, I’m looking for a list of recipes with pictures. This site only has two pictures and no descriptions for those recipe links.

Below is another example (from page two) of a site that caught my attention with the title, but lost me at the Preview. Why? I’m not a chef. I can’t read a list of ingredients and imagine what the dish will look like–like most searches, I need pictures.

Instant Previews Text Example

The Food Network Preview has exactly what I’m looking for: an organized list of recipes with user reviews and pictures. Click.

Instant Previews Ideal Image Example


How Old are Preview Images?

There are a couple of ways Google gets your Preview image. First, images are gathered when Google crawls your site. That means an image could be 5 days to 2 weeks old. User-agents for showing images on the fly like Google Web Preview (Mozilla/5.0 (en-us) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko; Google Web Preview) Version/3.1 Safari/525.13), are also being used. Check your referrer log for the agent name and that will tell you if your image taken on the fly, or grabbed when the site is crawled.

Snapshot of Relevant Text

Another feature of the Preview image is that it highlights where the searched phrase appears on your page. Text is outlined it in orange and added in larger text to a call out box as shown below.

Instant Preview Call Out Box

Multiple keyphrase mentions in the text result in multiple text boxes. From the sample searches I’ve done, only body text is appearing in the call out boxes.

Instant Previews Multiple Call Out Boxes


Optimizing for Google Instant Previews

Here are a few ways you can make sure Previews works for and not against your site.

1. Run a search for your most important keyphrases (make sure Google Instant is on).

2. In the SERPs, click the magnifying glass icon and scan all page previews on the page.

3. How does your image measure up? Are there more appealing images that may take clicks from you?

4. Are your Preview images void of call out boxes? That means you’re not using the keyphrase in the body text. Also, make sure that your page content matches the meta title and description.

5. You can opt out of the Preview image by adding the following meta tag to the <head> section of your site:

<meta name=”googlebot” content=”nosnippet”>

Instead of an image, users will see a “Preview Not Available” message.

The addition of Instant Previews makes absolute sense. It’s an great add-on to Instant. As an SEO; however, you need to take a hard look at your page design and ask: What will a prospect think when they see your page preview? Does the page image continue the conversation you’ve started with the title and description? Does it give the searcher what they’re looking for? Or it is lacking in some way?

November
9

How to Quickly Test a Market

Often, when a typical marketer is looking to get into a market, they dive right in and often fail far more than they succeed. It doesn’t have to be that way. Just by doing some “quick math” in your head and a few searches can greatly help you determine if you should proceed with that $500.00 ad spend in AdWords as a test in the market. When you find a potential market, spend just ten minutes. That’s it, just ten. Remember, sometimes a great market just won’t convert well for your offer … it happens and it is best to know as soon as possible if the market is a dud. And to figure that out just do these steps first:

In this example, I will use ClickBank, which sells mostly eBooks. You can apply these steps to any affiliate program or network.

Step One: Write down the industry, exact eBook name and author.

Step Two: Write down the commission per sale.

Step Three: Based on an aggressive conversion ratio of 3%, project revenue. (while I realize that 3% seems high, it is what you should expect with the right targeted keywords, the right product and the right landing page).

Step Four: Write down your “break even” point in terms of Cost Per Click (CPC).

Step Five: Open the Keyword Tool in Google AdWords

Step Six: Enter the “main keyword” or the merchant’s site

Step Seven: Show Estimated CPC, Search Volume Trends and Highest Volume Occurred In (drop down “Choose Columns to Display)

Step Eight: Change Match Type to “Exact” (we don’t want non-qualified clicks)

Step Nine: Sort by Estimated CPC (highest first)

Step Ten: Scroll down to the range of the break even point you wrote down in Step Four. You must have at least 300 in Search Volume from the month prior to consider using the keyword phrase. This will give you ten potential searchers per day.

Step Eleven: Verify that at least 100 clicks per day can be had with the keywords which match the above criteria.

Step Twelve: Re-run “Traffic Estimator” and target the actual product name and the author’s name and look for traffic estimates of ten clicks or more.

Let’s do an example together:

1. Dog Training. Kingdom of Pets: SitStayFetch by Daniel Stevens

2. $31.23

3. $93.69 ($31.23 x 3) 3 sales is based on 100 visitors at 3% conversion (most will state that this conversion ratio is too high, but because we will focus on the keywords that sell, this is the minimum that you should expect).

4. $0.94 ($93.69/100) Paying $0.94 per click would “break even” on the campaign.

5. N/A

6. I prefer to target the merchant’s site, as it often gives me a faster pull of effective keywords. I can also use SpyFu. So I put in: http://www.kingdomofpets.com/

7-9. N/A

10. The first section is keywords related to “how to train” which is the focus of the site and the keywords we want to focus on to sell the guide. Here are the ones that I selected:

how to train dog ($0.96) 74,000. Yes, this is above the range, but just barely and it is highly focused.
how to train my dog ($.90) 3,600
how to train a puppy ($0.80) 27,100
how to train puppies ($0.56) 3,600

The other sections? You can target them, but you will need to create a new landing page for each because each has a different market and we want to keep our conversions as high as possible. Here are some ideas:

“dog training collar” – this would be an eCommerce product sale rather than an informational eBook.

“dog trainer” – with the slumping economy, many could be looking to “moonlight” to help make ends meet. This could spur you to create your own product on how to make a career out of being a dog trainer. There is plenty of information to pull from on the web and being the merchant often is the ticket you have been looking for.

“dog bark” – this is a problem. By targeting your landing page to show how the problem can be solved quickly, easily and affordably is what the prospect is seeking.

This is where “out of the box” thinking comes in. Business opportunities can come anytime and anywhere, but you must seize the opportunity.

11. Verified. On the conservative side, 3,000 searches per day should result in at least 100 clicks.

12. Searching for “kingdom of pets”, “sitstayfetch”, “sit stay fetch” and “daniel stevens” did not return results which were usable.

With the above, it can be assumed since we can get over 100 clicks per day at around the break even point that this would be a product worth pursuing. A $50-$300.00 PPC test would be worthwhile.

PPC Tip: Make your bids half of what the top bid is, so if you do this, then you can target keywords at DOUBLE your break-even point to gain more qualified click throughs.