I am continually frustrated by how much misinformation there is out there regarding SEO. In many cases, the information is blatantly wrong and in other cases it is just being misapplied.

Most business owners and executives are not savy SEO experts. They all know that this “SEO thing” is important to their business so most are open to learning more.

In an effort to improve our knowledge I thought I would review some common misconceptions.

1. You must have Meta Keywords to boost your organic rankings. This is not true, Meta Keywords no longer have any real value in boosting your rankings. Google doesn’t even consider them in their ranking algorithm that includes well over 100 different factors.  Take Away: If someone is speaking to you about the value of meta keywords, this a red flag that they really do not know what they are talking about.
2. Google Page Rank directly impacts your site’s keyword rankings. There is evidence that Page Rank is positively correlated with rankings on Google.com. However, the degree of correlation is not overwhelming. Page Rank should simply be viewed as a benchmark indicator of Google’s view of the importance of your site.  I regularly see sites with lower Page Rank that rank higher than competing sites with a higher PR.  Take Away: Don’t get hung up on PR. It’s a nice number to look at occasionally but focus your efforts on converting your site visitors to customers.
3. “Our SEO is endorsed / approved by Google.“ Google clearly states that they do not endorse any SEO companies. Companies can be Google Certified in certain Google products, such as Adwords or Analytics. However, these certifications are NOT for SEO.  Take Away: In Google’s words “Beware of SEO’s that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. Read more from Google on SEO.
4. Guaranteed Rankings. There really is no such thing as guaranteed search engine rankings when you’re dealing with natural search results.  Google states on their on site that “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” Read more from Google. Take Away: Any company or individual that promises ‘Guaranteed Rankings’ should treated with extreme caution.
5. SEO is a one-time activity you complete and are then done with. How many times have you heard someone say “We actually just finished SEO’ing our site”?  SEO is not a one-time event. It is an ongoing process that must be actively managed.  Do you think your competitors are going to do a little work and then stop?  As competition online becomes more heated, it is essential that companies engage in an ongoing SEO program.  Take Away: If you’re serious about promoting your business online, then SEO should be a standard component of your marketing plan.
6. Spending money on Google Adwords boosts your natural results. It is understandable to believe that spending money on paid ads with Google will somehow affect your organic / natural rankings. However, it is not true. Google has stated repeatedly that paid ads have no bearing on organic search result, yet this myth continues to live on. Running paid ads in conjunction with an SEO program can certainly be a good thing. It can give you increased visibility which can lead to higher click through rates, more natural inbound links. etc. Take Away: Incorporate a PPC campaign as part your overall online marketing strategy but don’t expect it to have any impact on your SEO efforts.

SEO can be a very confusing subject to the average business person. However, that doesn’t mean that you should ignore it. My advice is to do some research and find a reputable SEO company to partner with…get a basic understanding of their approach to SEO, talk with their clients, and verify results they have achieved.

According to new research from comScore, on the State of Local Business Search, search on mobile phones is growing. The study found that 22% of U.S. mobile phone users searched on their phone in January 2011. That’s an 8% increase from the 16% who reported searching via mobile in January 2010.

Not only are more people searching from their mobile phone, the frequency of mobile search is increasing, too. The report found that of those conducting a search on their mobile device, 27% reported searching at least once a week, 43% reported searching 1-3 times per month, and 20% reported searching almost every day. According to the report, 73% of users are conducting search via a browser on their phone, and 56% conduct search using an app.

Further, 33% of mobile users are accessing local content, demonstrating that the rise of local search is not only for desktop users. One of the most popular types of information that users are looking for is maps.

So What?

Well, when it comes to marketing your local business online, this research underscores the importance of two key things:

1. Having a mobile friendly site for your business so it can show up in local search.
2. Optimizing your business’s Google Places page so that it will rank well in Google maps search.

Do you have a mobile optimized site for your business? Is your Google Places page optimized?

Contact us if you need a little help.

Here are my top 6 reasons I may hate your website:

1. Slow Load Times – If your site takes more than 4 seconds to load, then chances are I’m not waiting around. Google hates slow page load times too and is starting to incorporate it into their ranking algorithm.
2. Splash / Intro pages – These pages were cool in 2000 but now they just waste my time. I do not care to see the same intro every time I visit your site. An exception would an intro where you’re really telling me something new or making an offer.
3. Poor Web Design / Confusing Layout -  I use the 4 second rule on this one too. I should be able to quickly determine the following: Am I on the right site? Do you have what I need?  What do I need to do next?  Don’t make me think about it.  Your web design needs to lead traffic down a path that leads to conversions.
4. Too Little Information – Give me as much information as I need to move to the next step. If I cannot find the information on your website, then it is likely that I will move on to the next site. A good rule of thumb is to give your visitors as much information  as you can in a manageable format. Give me a quick overview and then give me a link to more detailed information if I want it.
5. Lack of Contact Info – Seriously?  Are you a real business? I’m very skeptical about doing business with a company that doesn’t give me easy access to contact them, if needed.
6. Too Many Google Ads – I really hate sites that are littered with Google Ads. I understand their value but a home page with Google Ads throughout it screams spammer to me. Google hates spam in their search results, yet many of the spammy sites I run across are littered with Google Ads…go figure.

Most of my reasons are common sense, yet I still see websites everyday that I hate. How does your site stack-up?

Just last week Google released it’s annual “Benchmarking” Report that consists of key metrics generated from websites. That’s data from hundreds of thousands of websites if you’re keeping score.  So with so much data the metrics are pretty statistically significant and really give an accurate picture of what’s going on with websites.

The fun for me, and it’s NOT looking at all that data, is that I just “zero in” on a few numbers that I think are important like BOUNCE RATE. The significance of Bounce Rate for me is that this one number tells me if websites are making a good FIRST IMPRESSION and getting that potential client to spend some time on the site and look around.

But first, let’s define BOUNCE RATE. Bounce Rate is when a web Visitor, or in this case a potential customer, comes to your home page and EXITS your site WITHOUT going to any other pages, in most cases within 15 seconds. For years Google reported this number as a range, generally between 40% and 60%. Now the numbers are getting a little more exact with this year’s number coming in at 47%. For those keeping score at home – High Bounce Rate BAD – Low Bounce Rate GOOD.

OK, so it’s 47%, what exactly does that mean to my website and my business?

I’ll answer that question, if I may, with a little game of pretend. First, let’s pretend that your website is a salesperson. Second, your salesperson meets 100 potential clients. Third, your salesperson introduces themselves to all 100. Fourth, 47 of those 100 potential clients walk away while your salesperson is still talking.

WOW! Say goodbye to HALF of your potential clients, “POOF” gone in 15 seconds. I guess that game of pretend wasn’t much fun was it? However Bounce Rate is not pretend IT’S REAL!

But wait, before you BOUNCE the baby out with the bath water, please realize that  knowing your Bounce Rate is a good thing even if it’s ugly. Because now you know exactly how to measure your salesperson’s FIRST IMPRESSION effectiveness. If it’s not good, maybe some home page “makeovers”, changing some text, or sprucing up your Value Proposition to make a better FIRST IMPRESSION is in order.

Of course many of you may be happy with that 47%. But here at WSI Webworks we’re NOT. Our average Bounce Rate is 34% (that’s 33% lower than the Google average). Some of our clients even come in below 20%. We work hard to make that FIRST IMPRESSION a good one which in turn brings in more clients. But it all starts with knowing one number – YOUR Bounce Rate.

Is your Website’s first impression a good one or does it need a BREATH MINT?

What’s your thoughts?

You do the math. Average time on a website can be around 2 minutes. Average time to read a page of text could eat up a lot of that time. In many cases people “skim” and miss most of your story – Not good.

All that text that you have carefully crafted WASTED! Bye-Bye to that great story about your company. Web visitors are just not going to read all that text.

However a 30-45 second video hits the “sweet spot”. In this case a picture (or video in this case) IS worth a thousand words. Also, a video can be directive. Telling visitors to “take a look at this or that”. And lastly, the final bonus, you can measure how long people watched.

Whether it’s good to know or not. You need to know if anybody cares what you are saying. PRICELESS

There are essentially three conversations taking place online today.  All three of these conversations should be addressed as part of your digital marketing strategy. The conversations are:

1. SEARCH – Consumers SEARCH online.
2. SURF – Consumers SURF online.
   
3. SOCIAL – Consumers SOCIALize online.
   

SEARCH represents a Consumer to Business Conversation. SEARCH is the #1 resource consumers use when looking for a local business.  Consumers have a specific need and are initiating the process with businesses. People only spend around 5% of their online time doing SEARCH. However, these consumers are looking for information, product, businesses, etc.  Having visibility online at this stage is critical for local businesses and the return is high.  If you own a local business, it is now critical that you’re being found in search.  Here are three simple to ask yourself? If you cannot answer YES to all three, then you should quickly address any deficiencies.

• Do you have a professional web design that is setup to convert / sell?
• Are you being found for your key services and product?
• Are you measuring your results and return so that you can continually improve them?

SURF represents a Business to Consumer conversation. SURF is often overlooked even though consumers spend more than 40% of their time online SURFING.  Many people today use the internet as their primary source of news and entertainment. The opportunity for businesses is to create awareness of your brand so your business will be the one they remember when they are ready to buy. Display advertising can be a cost effective method of brand advertising. The return is more difficult to measure but the intent is to be where the eyeballs are online.  And yes, you can target display advertising locally.

SOCIAL represents a Consumer to Consumer conversation. SOCIAL Media is a very important method of marketing, sales and branding for many businesses. It does work, and is a communications medium that should not be ignored. Consumers give and get referrals through online conversations and reviews on tons of social sites like Yelp!, Google Places, City Search, Merchant Circle,  Trip Advisor and more.  Some simple objectives with SOCIAL should be to leverage social sites to promote your online referrals, create brand awareness and manage your online reputation.  A simple way to measure your return and progress is through customer reviews and referrals.

So what?  Where do you start?

The simple answer is — your website. I know that sounds obvious but I see too many businesses getting caught up in the euphoria of SOCIAL media while they neglect SEARCH and SURF. Your website is your storefront and often the first thing consumers see about you. You should absolutely have a strong web presence and be found for consumers doing SEARCH.  These consumers have a need and are looking for a solution. The return on investment is very measurable and generally much stronger than SURF and SOCIAL.

Once you have your web presence in order, then you can address the SURF and SOCIAL as part of your overall digital marketing strategy.

Good, clean web design is one of the most important factors for site usability.  Every design aspect of your website should be understandable and clear to the visitor. Our attention spans are extremely sort when we’re searching  and  a good design doesn’t require visitors to think too much about navigating a site.

Here are a few simple guidelines:

• Navigation links should be clearly visible and easily understood.
• The most important information must be above the fold (the fold is the bottom of the site that is visible on your pc screen).
• There should be clear Calls To Action on every page.  What is it that you want the visitor to do next?  What if they are not sure- where should they go to get more info?  Tell your visitors what they should do next – don’t make them think about it.
• Provide multiple avenues for visitors to get information. Some people just want the highlights or a product compared to others that want to read reviews or technical specifications.
• Your visitors should be able to quickly find all the information they are looking for.

By following these guidelines, your visitors can immediately find their way around your website.  You are essentially putting them in control of the experience with a well-defined course that you have defined.

Website usability is all about giving the right information to the visitor at the right time.  The “right time” is different for each person and a good web design addresses your visitors varying needs and buying processes.

Remember, visitors will enter your site on different pages if you’re doing effective search engine optimization and they should always be able to tell what to do next (or more importantly, what you want them to do next).

With a new web design, you can improve your search engine rankings drastically or you can lose all of it. The biggest risk is losing the value of your inbound links which usually point to specific pages. To make sure this doesn’t happen, be sure to include an effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) design plan as part of your overall redesign process.

SEO shouldn’t start after the website is finished. It should begin with the initial development/design of a website.  Don’t treat SEO as an after thought.

Listed below are the basic components of a SEO design plan.

Goals

Start with the business goals of the new website. Every website should have goals, otherwise it is pointless to have one. The goals for your website could be any of the following: generate sales or leads, build your online brand and visibility, showcase products or services, or provide useful information to users and clients.

Analysis

Always analyze your website traffic statistics to determine what results are currently being generated. If you’re already ranking well for certain keyword phrases or if you have pages that are performing well, then you certainly need to know that and develop a plan to ensure you maintain those results.

Keywords

Select keyword phrases that have good traffic volume and that accurately describe what you offer. More specific keywords, i.e. long-tail phrases, will bring more visitors that are closer to making a buying decision.

Website Architecture

Design your navigation to be both user and search engine friendly. Think about what you want the user to do and make sure the path is clear. Make use of clear Calls To Action throughout the site. Imagine your website is a storefront (which it really is).  When a customer comes into your store what do they see and what do you tell them?  Very few retailers let a shopper browse the store without offering some assistance, such as ‘we just got our summer line in this week’, and ‘we’re running a buy one / get one free offer this weekend’.  Think of your website the same way to optimize the experience for the visitor.

Content

Content isn’t king – conversation is king, but to start conversation, you need relevant unique content. Search engines and visitors love content. Optimize your content to be seen by as many people as possible.

Links

Use an internal linking structure with keywords to enable website visitors to find exactly what they are looking for on your website.

Inbound links

Maintain the content that is attracting inbound links on your current site. If you can’t keep the content on the redesign, then develop a plan to replace those links.

Identify your inbound links providing the greatest value and develop a plan to contact those sites and get the links changed to your new pages.

SEO planning is very important before and during the design process of any successful web design project. It can make a huge difference in maintaining and building upon existing traffic and conversion rates.

We’re spending a lot more time these days digging deeper into web analytics with clients.  Visitors and Pageviews are great to look at, but the real effort should be focused on conversions.

A “conversion” is a user-defined event. It can be anything you want it to be. Some common conversion events are:

• Contact form submission
• Phone call
• Request for quote
• Newsletter signup
• Online purchase

One of the goals of any Internet Marketing strategy is to continually improve the results of your key metrics and conversion rates. In doing so, it is helpful to know how other companies are doing so you have a sense of what is attainable. Google Analytics provides some useful data for benchmarking standard metrics within your industry. However, one thing they are not currently benchmarking is conversion rates.

Do you wonder how your conversion rates measure up when compared to other websites?  Check out the chart below to see typical conversion rates for paid advertising (PPC), organic search (SEO) and online shopping engines, broken out by conversion type.

The data supports what we already know – organic conversion rates are typically higher than paid conversion rates. The reason is that organic searchers are often already familiar with the brand.  They have spent time searching for specific products or services and are more likely to be closer to purchasing. However, the conversion rate for PPC is not that far off at 5.8% for lead generation (contact forms, emails, etc) compared to 7.0% for organic search.

My take away’s are:

1. PPC advertising should not be discarded. When used effectively, PPC can deliver highly targeted, relevant traffic that converts on a scale close to SEO.
2. Search engine optimization (SEO) should be the number one tactic in your internet marketing strategy.  Organic results are more trusted, provide the opportunity for much higher traffic and generally convert higher than PPC search.

So, how do your results compare?

If you’re not running some sort of web analytics package on your website, then this should be the first thing you do in 2010.

One of the huge advantages of the internet over traditional media is that you can measure everything…if you have an analytics program. Google Analytics is a FREE program gives the average business more information than you’ll ever need.

Once you start gathering data, then you can answer questions that drive your future decisions on web design and search engine marketing. Questions, such as:

• How many people are visiting my website?
• How are they finding your web site?
• How long are they staying?
• How many site visitors convert and become real leads?

Your focus should be on conversions, leads and sales – not just visits. Once you start gathering data and determine your current results, then you can put a plan in place to improve the results.

Need help?

WSI is offering a Special Deal through January 2010 – Install Google Analytics for $88.  Sign up for this special offer.