May 12, 2004
In
This Issue:
1. Getting It Right the First Time
2. In the News - Related Words Important to Google
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - SEO and a Web Site Redesign
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Getting It Right the First Time
A recent survey by Marketing Sherpa, a highly-respected resource
for the marketing industry, offers some revealing information that
I think holds true beyond just Marketing. The survey of IT marketers
showed that web site improvements are tops on the list of things
they're budgeting for in 2004. Details: 83% of the marketers said
web sites are their most effective tool for generating leads, but
only 5% rated their own sites' ability to convert traffic into
leads as "excellent."
In other words, these marketing folks feel that web sites are
great tools for acquiring customers, but their own web sites aren't
good
enough to actually do it. So, the budget priority for 2004 is
to redo their web sites.
Sound familiar? It probably is to many of you. We all have to
think about (and execute) a site makeover every so often. Unless
you're
an Amazon.com or an eBay, redoing your site every 12, 24, or
36 months is just part of doing business. But the problem is
that
many times the reason a business needs to redo its site isn't
just the passage of time, it's because they didn't get it right
the
first time.
Question: Why do you think only 5% of the people in that survey
believe their own web sites are good at customer acquisition?
I'd bet it's because most companies forget about their customers
when
they first build a web site. They get caught up in the "it's
our web site" attitude and focus solely on themselves when
developing the site. Better idea: focus on your customers when
developing, and remember that it's THEIR site, too. What do they
want from your web site? What do they need? Take that approach
from day one and you'll be one of the 5% with a web site that's
good at customer acquisition. Get it right the first time, and
when it's time to redo your site, it'll be because you want to,
not because you need to.
(I'll post the link below to the survey in question, but the
details beyond what I've discussed above will probably not
be of much interest.)
Marketing Sherpa: 2004 IT Marketing Survey Results
_________________
In The News
The team at GoRank came out this week with another research study
that provides an interesting snapshot about search engine rankings.
You may recall that I mentioned GoRank's Keyword Density Analysis
report back in the April 14th edition
of this newsletter. That
report showed statistics measuring how often your keywords can
and should appear on a web page to help that page achieve the best
search ranking.
The latest report is titled "Google Ontology Analysis",
and to keep you from falling asleep, the subtitle puts its in
layman's terms: "Do related keywords matter in Google rankings?" The
answer, as we also discussed briefly back in the April 14th newsletter,
is a definitive YES. There are a lot of charts and graphs that
measure the importance of related keywords, but let me sum it
up here like this: As Google analyzes the text on a page to determine
what that page is about, it uses a complex analysis that rewards
the use of not only the main terms for that page, but also the
use of related words on the page. It's called Latent Semantic
Indexing,
and what it means to you is that -- to rank well with Google
-- the copy you write on your web pages shouldn't be bloated with
nothing but your main keywords; it should also include words
and
terms that are related. For example, if you have a page about
carpeting, be sure to use related words like rug and flooring.
That's an oversimplified explanation, but the point is that writing
like this is more important to Google than other search engines.
And
that's what GoRank proves with their Google Ontology Analysis.
GoRank Google Ontology Analysis
GoRank Keyword Density Analysis
In other news, Google this week launched its own corporate blog.
It promises to offer "insight into the news, technology, and
culture of Google." Google watchers have noticed already,
though, that a post about Google's worldwide hiring which originally
discussed the current debate over outsourcing has been edited,
and all references to the outsourcing debate were removed. Sounds
like someone near the top of the corporate ladder didn't like what
was said. Nonetheless, let's hope it'll make for an interesting
read as time goes by. Some have suggested Google may use it to
communicate with webmasters who want to have a dialog about Google's
search rankings. If so, that would be a step in the right direction.
Google Blog
So no one thinks this is an "all-Google, all the time" newsletter,
Yahoo has recently posted a new help page describing some cool "search
shortcuts" you can use to get exactly the type of information
you're looking for from their search engine. Did you know you can
do an encyclopedia lookup by adding the word "facts" after
your search term? Did you know you can turn Yahoo into a thesaurus
by starting your search with the word "synonym"? It's
all true, and there's a lot more.
Yahoo! Search Shortcuts
And lastly, we posted a new article on OWTweb.com within
the past week called "Defining Search Engine Spam." We talk so
much about what you should do to improve your rankings; this article
deals with some things you shouldn't do.
Defining Search Engine Spam
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Google PageRank, meet Yahoo! Web Rank
May 12, 2004 - ClickZ.com
The Google Toolbar PR meter reflects how popular Google believes
a page is, based on the number and quality of links that point
at it. Sounds great. But adding this meter was one of the worst
things Google ever did.
Search marketing takes center stage
May 11, 2004 - InternetNews.com
Web search for tomorrow
May 06, 2004 - Business Week
Google's success is spurring competitors to take search technology
to the next level. Here are some areas they're exploring.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Matt,
We are planning to rebuild our web site soon, and we want to
make it as search engine friendly as it can be. But we don't know
exactly how and when to approach that aspect of the new site. Do
we build the new site and then go in and add the things that will
help it rank better in search engines? How do you guys handle that
aspect of a project?
David
Hi David -- I hope you haven't started on the new site yet! Whether
it's a brand new site or a redesign of an existing site, the
techniques involved in making the site more search engine friendly
should
begin on day one. When you're discussing and writing out plans,
flow charts, or whatever you do to create a plan of attack, you
have to start including the search engine optimization (SEO)
techniques then. For example, you can't decide to do your home
page as one
big Flash animation and then go back later and decide to make
it search engine-friendly. If you're thinking about the SEO
stuff
from the beginning, you'll know not to do a Flash-based home
page and you'll avoid the headaches associated with having
to go in
later and fix things to make the site more search engine-friendly.
Be sure to check out our article on OWTweb.com called "Building
a Search Engine-friendly Web Site." It talks about the need
to start planning this aspect from day one of the project.
Building a Search Engine-friendly Web Site (Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
If you're a business owner in the Tri-Cities and you read the
Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business, be sure to read through the
issue that should be in your mailbox within the next 4-5 days.
Yours truly is going to be a contributing writer and my first article
is in this upcoming edition. You've hopefully read the article
already, it's the "Search
Engine Success Checklist" article
from OWtweb.com. But
even if the article isn't new, you should get a good laugh out
of the goofy mug shot that'll accompany it in the paper.
See you next week! Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service offered free to anyone
interested in learning more about web development, search engine
optimization/marketing, and just about anything else related to
running a business web site. You don't need to be an OWT client
to subscribe to our newsletter!
Subscribing and unsubscribing can be done online at OWTweb.com.
You may share this newsletter with others as long as the newsletter
is shared in its entirety.
Private replies to emails will be written if we have time, but
we don't provide web site critiques or consulting services
for free. You can learn more about our web development and search
engine marketing services online at www.owtweb.com.
|
