Global Marketing Plus

Google’s continuing mission is to deliver the best search results possible to its end users. So how can a search engine like Google differentiate between a company that is brand new (and might be a fly-by-night operation) versus an organization that has years of experience in the field? The answer: Google looks at the age of your domain name (along with several other varibles). If your domain name was registered last week, chances are good that your site won’t even appear in Google’s rankings for several months. (This is called the Google Sandbox.) But if your domain name was registered eight years ago, Google uses this information as a clue that you’ve been around for a little bit. In a nutshell, Google looks at the month and year when your domain was registered — and uses this to give more weight to companies that have been around for several years versus several weeks. Google also looks forward to see how long you have registered your domain; if you have registered your domain for five or ten years in the future, you’ve made a subtle, yet important economic decision that you’re still going to be around and in business in 2018. Here’s an instance where being frugal with domain name registration can actually hurt your rankings. That said, Google does place more weight on the past versus the future. So, what can you do to increase your rankings? First, make sure that your company’s domain name is registered for at least a few years from the present date. Second, make sure you know who is the contact person for your domain name. We’ve recently seen several instances where the person in charge of the domain name moves to a different organization, goes on vacation, or even passes away. And then, if the domain name comes up for renewal, it can be a mad scramble to keep your website and corporate email up and running.

If you’re not sure of the age of your domain name, please let me know, and I’d be happy to have our team take a quick look.

Thanks,
Ron

Even though search engines can’t read words inside graphics, they do use the name of the file and other contextual information to increase your rankings. One of the biggest missed opportunities is not naming images with search engine optimization in mind.

I can’t tell you how many times I see a site that has the logo named: logo.jpg

While that’s sufficient to display the logo in a browser, it’s much better to name the logo with descriptive keywords, such as: global-marketing-plus-logo.jpg (notice I seperated the words with an “-”.  This lets search engines read the words.  If I named the logo as: globalmarketingpluslogo.jpg, that is not a word and search engines will not recoginize it as a word).

If you want to further increase the relevancy, you can create a folder (also with keywords) that can help you increase keyword density on a page.

For example, placing an image in a directory like this will give you more relevancy than in a more non-descriptive folder:
/search-engine-optimization-services/seo-services-header-logo.jpg

Yes, it takes a little bit more time and effort for someone to type out a longer image name and keep it organized into different folders on your website.

But our research has found that increasing the relevant keywords in your images is a sure fire way to increase your search engine rankings.

Let me know if you need help with website development or email marketing.

Ron

Search engines love relevant text. They want to match the keywords that an end user types into a search engine with keywords that are located on your website.

Keyword density analysis is one of the most important ratios of how often these keywords appear on an individual webpage.

What is keyword density? It’s a percentage, calculated this way: Number of times keyword appears on a page / Total word count on page = Keyword Density Keyword density is usually displayed as a percentage.

So, if you have a page that has 100 words on it, and you have a keyword appear 5 times on the page, your page would have a keyword density of 5%. (5 / 100 = 5%)

In a real life example, the search term “website design” has an overall keyword density on this page of 4.13%:

Click the graphic above to see a live sample of a keyword page.

(10 instances of the keywords / 242 total words on the site = 4.13%)

However, not all keywords on a page are treated the same. Keywords in the title tags, page name and section headings are often given higher weight than keywords that appear in the regular content area of the page.

Here’s how the keywords break down in the different areas of the site:

So, how much keyword density is too much? It depends on which study you read, but it’s generally best to keep your keyword density between 3-6%. Anything more, and you’ll be penalized for trying to spam the search engines.

As a general rule of thumb, if the copy of the site makes sense to a human reading it, you should be fine. But if you repeat the same keyword five times in a row (Website Design, Website Design, Website Design, etc), then you can be banned from search engines or penalized.

Let me know if you’d like us to do a keyword density analysis on your site…

When websites were brand new, a sitemap was used to help people find their way around a disjointed site. As websites became easier to navigate, sitemaps fell out of favor.

But now they’re back… because they are the equivalent of baby food for search engines. Just a few years ago, the philosophy about sitemaps went something like this:

If your customers need to use a sitemap to find their way around your website, you haven’t done your job organizing your content and creating a   navigational system that is easy to understand.

But sitemaps are now back in favor. Why? It’s less about human visitors and more about search engines.

What is a sitemap? A sitemap is page that lists all of the other pages on your site, usually in a bulleted list.

Here’s an example of a sitemap:

As I’ve discussed before, search engines are easily confused. Many pages of a website are often ’hidden’ behind tricky menus or drop-down lists. Or, the links to reach a specific page are too deep (i.e. more than a couple of pages down from the home page).

A sitemap, linked from the home page of the site, will list every page of your site in one convenient place.

When a search engine visits your site map, it’s very easy for them to then get a list of every page on your site, and then crawl, digest and include all of your content in their system.

We generally recommend having the link to your sitemap on the bottom footer navigation of your site.

But you need to make sure that as your site changes, your sitemap is updated.  Otherwise, Google and others may not index the latest pages placed on your site.

And even better than an HTML sitemap is an XML sitemap. An XML sitemap is a sitemap that is specifically formatted for search engines like Google. It’s a machine-readable version that allows you to specify all of the pages of the site.

Click the graphic above to see a live sample of an XML sitemap.

Adding an XML sitemap ensures that a site will get indexed much more quickly and more rapidly than not using this method at all.

For my new sites, the XML sitemap allows the sites to be indexed in 3-4 days vs. the usual 3-4 months.

Let me know if you need help with a sitemap or XML sitemap for your site. We’re here to help.

We’ve discussed local search, and how to make sure you don’t confuse search engines with graphics and flash animation. We’ve also talked about the all-important title tags.

This week, we’ll take a higher-level view to discuss what search engines look for when ranking your site.

At the end of the day, a search engine is in business to help you find the most relevant results possible when you conduct a search. Search engines make their money by selling relevant advertising to supplement the natural, organic search results.

Because a top ranking in Google or another search engine can translate into a great deal of business, it’s important to know how search engines determine who gets placed at the top of the list.

The two biggest ways search engines rank you are based on:

One of the most cost-effective ways to boost your search engine performance is to make sure that the title tags on your website are set up properly. When you search in Google, the search results start with a blue underlined link.

Here’s an example:

What displays in the first line of the website listing is usually what is contained in the title tag of a web page. The keywords you placed in the search box are usually boldfaced in the search results.

So, just what is a title tag, and why does it matter for search engine positioning?

According to the World Wide Web Consortium, the Title tag was designed to help people “identify the contents of a document.” When people view individual web pages out of context (often via search), context-rich page titles help tell the visitor a summary of the page.

Instead of a title like “Home”, which doesn’t provide much contextual background, web designers should supply a title such as “Introduction to HoN3 Model Railroads” instead.

Google and other search engines use these rich contextual clues as a way to hone its search results.

On a web page, the title tag is part of the HTML code. Here’s what the code looks like on Global Marketing Plus’s site:

<title>Website Design, Development, Email Marketing, Content Management, PHP programming Salt Lake City, Utah</title>

Most end users won’t see the title tag. But if you remember back to my email tip about subject lines, the title tag is what a subject line is to an email campaign: It entices the end user to pay attention and open the page to read more.

Top Five Most Common Mistakes for Title Tags:

1. Untitled: When many of the popular programs create a new HTML page, it puts ’Untitled’ into the title tag. It’s up to the Web designer to change this… and since most users don’t see it, sometimes they forget to change it.

2. No Title Tag: Like the “Untitled” tag, another key mistake is simply leaving out the title tag. If you do a view source (Internet Explorer: View —> Source), and the title tag appears like:

<title></title>

… then you don’t have a title tag.

3. “About” Tag: Another common mistake for title tags is to have the title tag refer to a section of your website. But a title tag that reads, “About” doesn’t tell me much about what the company or website is “About.” Instead, have it read:

<title>About the Company: Website Development & Marketing, Email Deployment, and PHP
  programming</title>

This is sure to get more keywords into the title tag, and if you’re searching for a company, you instantly know what they do.

4. Company Name In Title Tag: If you want your company name, we recommend putting your company name at the end of the title tag so it doesn’t dilute the effectiveness of the keywords.

5. Same Title Tag on Multiple Pages: You should have a unique title tag for each page of the site. Why? As each page is unique, you should have a title tag that describes it’s unique content.

I hope you found this search engine strategy helpful. Changing the title tags on a site is a quick, fast and easy way to increase search engine positioning. Let me know if you’d like us to take a look at your site and make recommendations for you (at no charge).

This next strategy for Search Engine Optimization is often overlooked. But it’s key to making sure that people can find you at the top of the page when they conduct a search in Google, Yahoo or another search engine.

Search engines are really good at reading text. But they’re very easily confused. And if Google gets confused when it crawls through your site, you won’t rank very high in search results.

Search engines, for example, can’t read words that are contained in graphics or flash animation. So if your company’s name is only contained in a graphic on your site, this content is ‘invisible’ to a search engine. Same thing goes for product or service names. 

Some designers will tell you that Google can now read flash and you can use it all you want.  However, even Google suggests you be careful and avoid it!

The root of the problem lies with graphic designers. Graphic designers are really good at building graphics, but, unfortunately,  they sometimes don’t know how to create SEO-friendly design.

Most websites, however, are designed by graphic designers who are really good at building graphics, and less interested in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It takes more time to have content placed in text, and use a stylesheet to format it so that a search engine can read it. Especially when it’s so easy to create a good looking graphic in Photoshop.

Here’s an example of a graphic: 

By formatting using text and a cascading stylesheet (CSS), I can make it look exactly the same.  However, search engines can read the text version much easier! 

Here’s an example of a site that uses all flash (and is invisible to search engines).

While it looks pretty to humans, to Google the content is completely invisible. Here’s how the site appears to Google in its text cache. (You can see that there is no text or content that appears.)

Now here is a non-flash version of a simular page.  In this case, the intention was not to copy the first page exactly.  If that were the purpose, this page would look almost the same as the first!

Even if you’re not worried about organic search positioning, but are doing paid search engine marketing (like Google Adwords), it’s important that the content on your site is easily digested by a search engine.

Why? Google Adwords ranks the pages on your website, and compares it to your keywords and ad copy. The more relevant Google ranks the text on your site, the less you’ll have to pay for a sponsored ad on Google (and the higher your position).

In Summary: Don’t confuse search engines by keeping your content ‘locked up’ in graphics. It’s a small little detail in the web design process, but one that will pay dividends for a long, long time with increased search results.

I hope you enjoyed this search engine strategy. Let me know if we can help you with your web marketing or search marketing needs.

During the past six month, our team has been conducting research to find out what makes a successful website and why other websites never reach their potential.  We surveyed thousands of web visitors to find out what they like and dislike about different websites.  We also studied website statistics for thousands of websites.

How long does the average visitor stay on a website?

Our research shows that a visitor stays only a short time!

0–29 seconds ….about 65% (ave. 12 seconds)!
30 seconds – 2 minutes …about 17%
2 -5 minutes …about 7%
5 -15 minutes …about 5%
15 -30 minutes …about 3%
30 minutes -1hour …about 2%
over 1 hour….about 1%

What causes a person to leave a website so soon? 

We hear lots of complaints about the use of Flash or JavaScript to cycle images and messages on homepages. We wonder: Is Flash truly a killer app? Or is it a sales killer?

I’m not talking about the Flash site introduction pages, which fortunately have nearly disappeared. I am talking about an increasing number of small sites which are cycling images, changing messages, and sending offers across the screen — generally causing havoc among people trying to understand an often complex webpage.

This is not a tirade against Flash or JavaScript. It is an appeal for improved usability.

Problems with Scrolling Messages

Here are the problems caused by changing messages and scrolling offers:

1. Distraction. A large percentage of people, especially those with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), find them incredibly distracting. It is difficult to read — let alone comprehend — a webpage where dominant images continue to change and distract.The first rule to get conversions is: Convey your value proposition. Make clear what business you are in and why it is of benefit to the reader. But Flash often distracts viewers from understanding this essential message.Eyes are naturally attracted to motion and light. If your visitors don’t finish reading a paragraph, they won’t understand the value proposition. And unless they understand your value proposition, nothing will happen. Our user testing constantly reveals this pattern of distraction.
2. Disappearing messages. Some sites cycle images and messages a few times and then stop. However, once the cycling has stopped, it is impossible to go back and look at the messages. Visitors become frustrated when they can’t review them.
3. Ineffectiveness. Flash does not seem to increase the effectiveness of messaging. Flash images alone convey little beyond an attractive look and feel, but these displays often consume 10% to 30% of valuable homepage real estate.
4. Transitoriness. When we allow test users 8 to 10 seconds to view a homepage — and then hide the page — they rarely remember the content of the Flash messages. Far more often they are able to remember simple static headlines.
5. Trained avoidance. Our testing indicates that Flash is becoming like banner ads that people have trained themselves to ignore.

If you watched users get frustrated day in and day out with cycling images and messages, you might lose patience — as we often do — with sites that don’t spend the time to determine exactly the kind of impressions they generate. As you explore new and supposedly engaging website technologies, be sure to test them before fully implementing them on your site.

On May 1st, I was invited by Bonnie Whitlock to attend a musical called “Wizard of Odd” at Deseret Star Theater in Murray, Utah.

What a fun night!  We laughed until our sides hurt!  This was the first time I had the opportunity to attend a play at Deseret Star and was very surprised at the professional way the actors entertained.  I would suggest that anyone go!

What also amazed me was the way they took a very famous movie and applied local flavor to it to appeal to the audience.  By using local names and places, it drew the audience into the play and everybody could relate to the new jokes.

Tip: Pull your visitors into your website by including words and phrases that people can relate to.  For example, it is suggested we do not write using terms used in your industry unless your readers are already in your industry.  Write on a 7th to 9th grade level and you will not loose as many readers!

If you have never been to Deseret Star, you should go.  Thank you Bonnie for the opportunity to experience the fun.  Our whole group said you stole the show and made it fun for all of us!

Recently Kris and I had the opportunity to attend a concert at the Hawaiian Cultural Center in Midvale, Utah. Wow! talk about fantastic. It was like attending a family reunion. Everyone was happy and most dressed as if we were in Hawaii attending this function!

The main event was a “slack guitarist” from Hawaii that played the most
fantastic music and kept us entertained for over an hour!

Several local people were on the program, including some fantastic hula dancers!

When it was over and we stepped outside to go to the car, I was disappointed to see we were not really in Hawaii!

When the Hawaiian Cultural Center asked me to build a website for them, they wanted to create the look and feel of Hawaii. I think we did that. Look at their website and judge for yourself. Go to Hawaiian Cultural Center and look (www.hawaiianculturalcenter.org). I think they did a wonderful job making visitors feel the Hawaiian spirit just as I felt I was in Hawaii at the concert.

Tip: Remember to make your visitors feel your passion when they come to your website. That is one way to stand out from all your competition!

Check out the Hawaiian Cultural Center’s website to see what other activities they have. For
example, they have Hula Lessons! Check out their calendar and visit the center at 741 West Smelter Street, Midvale, UT or call them at (801)562-5642