I couldn’t resist posting this Dilbert cartoon strip from February 19. I am not sure if its the recognition that SEO has become mainstream enough to merit a Dilbert strip, or the fact that Scott Adams understands that sometimes sacrifices must be made to keep Google happy.

Enjoy:

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Last year Google said that load times would become a factor in determining your page rank. I have been toying with Joomla load times trying to speed things up and found two things that are very effective (and easy):

1. In the  >Global Configuration panel under >Server,  enable gzip compression (duh!)
   Using this, the content the server send the info to the browser compressed so bandwidth isn’t as big of an issue.
2. Install a CSS/Java compression plug-in. I used a plug-in CssJsCompress to great effect, be sure to configure Css/JS compression and enable the plug-in after you install it.
   Using this, the CSS and Java scripts are compressed.

The sites I have on godaddy have had no issues with these changes and I have measured significant improvements in load times.

More technical details can be found here: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html

To test performance, I recommend using a combination of Firebug and Page Speed plug-ins in Firefox.

I am still investigating ways to speed up WordPress, if you have some recomendations let me know!

SEM Huntsville Joomla, page rank

I have written several posts on Quality Score, but I recently found two articles on the subject that make it worth revisiting. Quality Score is Google’s way of assessing how relevant your paid search keywords are to the searchers you’re targeting. 

This article by by Craig Danuloff discusses  in monetary terms what the real costs of a low-quality-score are and this recent article, also by by Danuloff suggests 5 Steps to Improve Your Quality Score.

SEM Huntsville ppc, quality score, SEM Huntsville

This is very cool and while it wouldn’t be appropriate for every ad, there are places were this could be very helpful. Sitelinks enable you to link to multiple services within a single ad. Imagine company listings for a business like My SEO firm with direct links to services like Search Optimization, Internet Marketing, and Website Audits. I am not sure how this will play into Google’s quality score algorithm, but I am sure this aspect hasn’t been overlooked. The downside, it only works when your ad is in the top-most spot:

This image from RustyBrick:

Here’s where the sitelinks are added in the campaign settings:

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Increasingly people are going on-line, not only for phone number and addresses, but for reviews and recommendations. Website’s not only give you the opportunity to list the standard phonebook info like you’re address, when you’re open and years in business, but also detailed information and photos about your products and services. You can explain who you are and why someone should do business with you. You can post videos not only about your company, but about the work you have performed and of happy customers.

Even my wife, who shunned the digital world including email until a couple of years ago, now spends many hours on-line. As for me, the only time I go to the phonebook is for an older company that I think might not have a web site, and even then, I will go to an online phonebook first.

This article lists the results of a recent study and highlights where people are going for local business information, The article also chronicles the shifts that have occurred over the last three years. http://searchenginewatch.com/3635350

If the phonebook isn’t dead, it is fading fast.

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Yahoo announced at the SMX East conference yesterday that they were no longer using meta keywords. In the report Yahoo stated that they had announced this earlier in the year - but apparently no one outside Yahoo got the memo. While none of the major engines now support meta keywords, I still recommend using them in all your pages. There are a lot of spiders crawling the web that still use this information to categorize your content and can result in back-links to your site.

SEM Huntsville key phrases, keywords, Yahoo

I just read a great article by Ian Lurie at Coversation Marketing titled Things You Don’t Know About Your Customers. Perhaps more aptly named Things to remember when designing a website, its a great read with clear points we all need to remember. In summary:

1. Reading onscreen is hard, for everyone.
   • Use short paragraphs.
   • Use short lines.
   • Use wide line spacing and nice margins.
   • Use dark text on a light background. 
   • Scrolling up-and-down is OK
   • Use lists.
2. They browse in an F-shape
3. They can’t remember your web address (being at the top of search results for your name means nothing)
4. They don’t search for your name (they search for answers to problems)
5. They don’t want to log in (or anything standing between them and their goal)
6. They don’t want an ‘experience’ (simple is better)
7. They do want your newsletter (make it prevalent and easy to sign-up)
8. They don’t care how clever you are. (just the facts please)
9. They aren’t enticed by mystery.
10. They get lost a lot (make navigation easy, redundant, and extend to your 404 pages)
11. They aren’t using cell phones  (at least not in big numbers)
12. They still use Internet Explorer (so be sure it works in IE)
13. They’re using big monitors. (so don’t create 800 X 600 layouts)
14. They need to want (create desire)

SEM Huntsville, SEO Huntsville content tips, designing a website

The big news in the press today is the Microsoft/Yahoo deal. I have already received questions about this from a couple of clients, so I thought it best to expand here.

In the deal the search brand at Yahoo will remain to be “Yahoo Search” but it will be  “Powered by Bing.”  There will be no immediate changes however until they get regulatory approval, following approval the integration effort will move forward (expected early 2010).

What about allocating advertising dollars?
In the deal it appears that some mix of Yahoo Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter advertising will continue.  It was reported that Yahoo ads will continue to run in the Yahoo properties with Microsoft getting 12% of the revenue and some Yahoo ads will be syndicated over the Microsoft network. Bing will run ads on Microsoft properties (and may run some ads on the Yahoo network as well), but the details are unclear at this point. It will take some time for all this to shake out, with conversions rates ultimately determining where ad dollars will need to be spent.

What about optimizing for Bing?
This is really a non-starter, Google’s market share is so large that doing anything that could compromise your traffic from that engine would be a mistake. Unless Bing’s market share increases more than just picking up Yahoo traffic, there is really no point – as long as the feature sets remain similar. If  features emerge that are unique to Bing, and could be supported without impacting your Google traffic, then optimizating for those features would be in order.

Press Release: http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/thedeal/pressroom/Default.aspx

SEM Huntsville, SEO Huntsville adcenter, bing, yahoo marketing