Website Design, Search Engine Optimization

You have been reading all the live blogging and twitter feeds from #smx advanced, wishing you had attended, and possibly feeling sorry for yourself because you don’t have the necessary travel budget. Here are some tips on how you can plan for SMX Advanced 2011.

Let’s first look at the total package, you have the conference expense, which is always well over $1,000, then the airfare, hotel, transportation and eating out. We are talking about a $2,000 plus proposition, after taxes. Personally, if I am going to spend that amount of money, I would rather be with my family, at a resort or in an exotic city, not in a conference room with hundreds of search marketers. Since I do enjoy attending Search Conferences and always get great information I will share with you how I have managed to fit this expense into my tiny business travel budget and attend SEO / Search Marketing Conferences for the past 10 years. It saddens me that these educational conferences are not geared to support the small business owner and it is the corporate expense account that benefits. The example below is a sample of my itinerary for SMX Advanced 2010.

Five Cost Saving Tips For Attending Search Marketing Conferences:

1. Conference Pass: Always buy your conference pass with the early bird deals. Sometimes the amount saved at the early bird price can pay your airfare. Since you are booking so far in advance ask about the refund policy for the conference. I have found most conferences have a 30 day cancellation policy, this fee may be a few hundred dollars.Many conferences have a student price and you have to be able to prove that you are a student.
2. Travel or airfare: I always look for conferences that are close to where I live. This may not always be possible, I am in California near San Francisco and there are many great conferences to pick from every year. There are a few I like to attend, like SMX Advanced, that are further away and not so travel cost effective to get too. Therefore I may need to fly, airfare, most of you know how to find cheap deals with airfare, book well in advance or use your free miles. Kayak is a great website for finding good deals if you don’t have frequent flyer miles.
3. Transportation – Seattle Lite Link Rail from the airport into town, costs $2.50, vs. I think the Greyhound hotel bus may be over $20.00, or a cab will cost around $40.00. I am traveling lite, so I don’t have a lot of luggage to transport and I walked from the Lite Rail to my hotel.
4. Hotel – This can be a major expense especially in larger cities, no one wants to stay on the wrong side of town in a sleazy hotel. Most conferences have a sponsor hotel, or a hotel that is near the venue. I love staying at the hotel close to the venue, especially in Santa Clara at the Convention Center but sometimes due to expenses it is not possible. Many name brand hotels in most city’s have a frequent visitor program where you can acquire free nights.For SMX Advanced in Seattle, I am staying at a lower budget hotel that is 8 blocks away from the venue. It is a 20 minute walk to the conference center (downhill), granted it is not sexy, but I am saving over 50% or more on hotel fees. I am not on the water, but how many hours does one spend in your hotel room? Here are two hotels in Seattle to pick from: Best Western and La Quinta .  I frequently travel with my dog and the La Quinta hotels are pet friendly and they don’t have a surcharge. I am a part of their points program, which rewards with free nights after so many points.  They also provide free WiFi. It looks like the Best Western may be cheaper. They both have a AAA rate.
5. Food – since I am writing this while attending SMX Advanced in Seattle, and staying at the La Quinta, it is a block away from a fabulous Whole Foods Market. In fact I think it may be one of the nicest Whole Foods I have ever been in. After the cocktail parties, I grabbed a bite and a beverage went back to my room, with a frig.,  kicked off my shoes and ate dinner for under $20.00.
6. Bonus Yoga Tip: If you are into Yoga, there are a couple of yoga studios, one near Whole Foods in the Westlake Center and another next door to the La Quinta

Most that attend Search Marketing Conferences are much younger than I am so you might be thinking “whoa, this sounds old school and boring, I go to the conferences for the networking and the parties”. You don’t have to give that up, nice part is the beverages and food are usually included in your conference pass. Do your research, book in advance, pay over time and of course if you know someone in town, couch surfing can work too.

If you are a small business, budget minded how do you plan and afford your business trips?

Matt Cutt’s is one of the lead engineers and the go to guy at Google for information on SEO and how Google ranks pages for organic search. He won’t tell you what the algorithm is or the secret sauce for ranking websites but he will give you tips on how to make your site more search engine friendly.

This is the Site Review presentation from the Google IO conference a few weeks ago, Matt was also with two other people from his team at Google, Greg Grothaus, Tiffany Lane and Vannessa Fox, as she remarks is not on his team at Google. The video is an hour long and if you are interested in SEO I think worth your time. I went to Google IO, a developers conference, and debated if I wanted to sit in on this session. But Matt Cutt’s and gang kept me entertained and I learned some new things because search is always changing. If your website has any of these issues I can help you plus more.

Next week I will be in Seattle for SMX Advanced (that stands for Search Marketing Expo).

SMX West, the search marketing conference and expo was held in Santa Clara, California the beginning of March 2010. I usually attend this enlightening conference  but this year was an exception and  could not make it. Luckily today with live blogging and social media sites like twitter, it is easy to stay informed on issues that are important to an industry.  Twitter is one of my favorite platforms, I like it better than facebook, for many reasons. If you search a specific hashtag on twitter, you will see all the streams about a particular subject.  Hashtags on each twitter post creates groupings of twitters and the best hashtag for SMX west is #smx. I can also follow all the upcoming conferences. I use TweetDeck to receive my tweets and group the searches or hashtags, I am interested in following. For example another search that I follow relilgiously is #joomla, I learn about all the new and interesting developments that are going on with joomla, stay connected with developers and  I am  able to join in on the conversations.

Reading through all the #smx twitters, I found this valuable recap and special newsletter by Bruce Clay , one of the training guru’s for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and has time tested tools, if you have not heard about him check out his website. I thought his recap did a good job of summarizing the areas with the most valuable information.

Since I liked it so much I recapped his recap for you;  highlighting  some important points and sprinkled a few of my own comments throughout:

Tips to get better organic Sitelinks:

• create a site that is well-structured and easy for users to navigate;
• use meaningful page Titles (make sure your page titles are not duplicated throughout the site);
• pay attention to anchor text throughout your site;
• avoid boilerplate and repeated text;
• consider headers and other content on each page.The less links on a page means those links are more valuable.

The Need For Speed!
Google Says It Matters so pay attention to KPI’s (key performance indicators in your analytics) that shed light on page speed bottlenecks, such as visits, page views, bounce rate and time on site. Bounce rate and time on site are some of the big ones that I keep track of.

Three steps to a faster site:

• check site performance in Webmaster Tools;
• install the Firebug plugin Page Speed;
• explore tools like YSlow from Yahoo and WebPagetest.org , and hang out in the “Make the Web Faster”  forum.

Get to know and understand sites like Urbanspoon and http://www.urbanspoon.com/blog and Google Goggles, search by taking a picture. Visual Search technology. It’s visual, watch this:

Added thought, everthing is coming up mobile! Learn more about mobile search

When reviewing your analytics reports for organic search, worry about 3 things:

• opportunity;
• competition;
• attribution

Opportunity and competition are about improving rankings on terms you want.
Attribution shows evidence that what you’re doing works.

I think this next point is often overlooked today and misunderstood by many. It is a big issue and I cannot stress the importance of this enough:

Proactive reputation management is engaging with an audience in positive ways before a crisis so that the business will be in a secure position if and when a rep management situation arises.

I am planning to be at SMX Advanced in June, I will have more good stuff for you then.

Yesterday I attended SMX West 2009, SMX stands for Search Marketing Expo. I try to attend a few of these conferences every year for the networking benefits and to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to search marketing. I always return to my office with a few new tricks and insights.

Here is a list from one of the sessions that discussed the 12 most common strategic mistakes that companies or businesses make in their SEO and paid search initiatives. I am going to list them not go into detail.

1. Set measurable goals for a campaign
2. Failing to assign a dollar value to every “conversion action” available on your site.
3. Assessing the success of Search Marketing using solely a Direct Marketing model.
4. Treating SEO as a project NOT as an ongoing process.
5. Making a #1 ranking as your most important objective when it maybe costing you business.
6. Focusing on the big keywords and forgetting about the long-tail keywords.
7. Engaging in Paid or Natural (Organic) Search Engine Marketing but not both.
8. Using YOUR language for search terms and not that of your customers.
9. Optimizing only your web pages and not your other digital assets.
10. Treating your search marketing and other channels of marketing separately.
11. Failing to bid on the search terms that your site ranks highly with in the organic search results
12. Bidding solely on the “branded terms” and ignoring “non-branded terms”.

Let me know if you have questions or experience with any of these. If you are new to search and interested in search engine optimization (SEO) for your website, you may want to attend one of these conferences. The expo is usually free if you pre-register. Session passes are much more expensive.

Most people, especially small businesses  today have a website. Most very proud of their web presence and should be and naturally their websites bring them business. Many times in ways they never thought possible. But what  do they REALLY know about their website and what could be done differently? Until you emmerse (much like baptism) your site into search analytics you will never know.

Analytics is one method to get “personal” with your website. Common questions you should ask yourself: 

• Who is visiting your website?
• Where did they come from (referer)?
• How long are they staying on your site?
• What pages do they enter and exit your site?
• Are they submitting a contact form or buying a product (converting)?

How do you do this, without spending a lot of money on products that may not work?
I have tried different software packages (which I don’t want to get into here) and some do work, but right now my favorite is Google Analytics. Why? Because it is truly free and has great easy to read information. Google Analytics does take some time to learn and they say you get what you pay for, but I do believe it is worth the effort. I am now a “Google Analytics Junkie”.

Let’s get started with your website:

1. First you need a chunk of code to put on “every” page of your website that you wish to track. This is your tracking code. You can get this code by signing up for an AdWords account or if you have a gmail account use that as your user name/password (you don’t have to participate in AdWords). Here is the link to Google Analytics help center http://www.google.com/analytics/indexu.html
2. Now you are in your adWords account, this is really confusing. Across the top are tabs click on Analytics and that should get you started. “Create my free Google Analytics account”. Click on the continue>> button
3. Follow the directions on this page, submit >> accept the terms >>
4. Wallah - cut and past this code into your website right before the </body> tag on EVERY page you wish to track.
5. I know your lost, try the help center link above, it is worth your time and I know you can do it.

Now the fun begins watch the information roll in, give it some time. You will want to create what is known as the dashboard, personalize your dashboard.
Sample dashboard:

 This can be done by clicking through the information on the left hand navigation. For each category there is a button on the top of the page to either export / email / add to dashboard . Get familiar with these buttons. I have a report sent to me weekly with my dashboard information so that I do not have to login to find out what is going on and it gives me past week comparisons.

Some of my favorite information is: 

1. site useage 
2. the map overlay (where in the world are these visitors)
3. traffic sources overview  (where is all you traffic coming from)
4. content overview (what pages are most popular)
5. all traffic sources (who is referring to you)
6. Visitors overview (clicks per day, who is unique, how many page views…)
7. Now my favorite, setting goals and the funnel report

In each category you can get more and more granular, the best part – our friends at Google do it all for FREE!

Before I became a Google Analytics Junkie, I was THE original  Google Addict. My SEO addictions don’t appear to be going away. Does anyone know of a good 12 step program? Have fun and beware of the addictions.

SMXWest 2008

These are my notes from SMXWest 2008. Much of it is in shorthand. But if I did not do it in this fashion I would never get it out. I compare it to when you are in school and you needed to borrow a classmates notes. If you feel I got something wrong or it needs more definition please comment.

During the conference they had an open WiFi (provided by SEOMoz.org) and many participants had their computers open and were taking notes, others were chatting on IM, some were surfing the web, checking email; I think they call it multi tasking. I made a conscious decision that during the sessions I would not have access to my computer and that I would write my notes. This could be a generational thing, but for me personally I get distracted and do not get the full benefit.

Day One

  Keynote Speech by Danny Sullivan

  Search 3.0, Search 4.0 & Beyond

What was/is Search 2.0?

• Click through
• Links – aka pagerank
• Context = link text

The keywords “miserable failure” – who pops up #1 and Google kills it.

What is Search 3.0?

  Vertical search (what does that mean)

  Blended search, universal search, invisible tabs

  Vertical results are blended together

  Local / Video / News

Ask.com now has a 3 pane or column SERP

  Microsoft – LiveSearch LiveScopes

  Yahoo – shortcuts to upcoming events now introducing Yahoo! SearchMonkey

Search 4.0

  All about what you do personally, this currently is mainly done by Google

  Tracking your search history and where you go on the internet to come up with better “personalized” results. Gone are the days when everyone sees the same site rankings

  Since, everyone sees things differently therefore it takes in the information from your personalize search page i.e. iGoogle, you can turn personalized search off by logging out of google. You can also add three characters to the end of your search and it will not use personalized tracking. (I have to look through my notes to find the actual characters but I think it was “&pws”. Please don’t quote me on that because I am not sure.

One thing personalized search is missing is the human factor and that is how you are feeling at the moment.

Types of Social Searching:

• Social Search “swickis”
• Social Sites and social bookmarking: Digg, Delicious …
• Social Networking: Facebook, MySpace

The joining of SMM and SEO (the WonderTwins as they were referred to at the conference)

  Social Media Marketing and SEO:

• Builds links back to your content
• Authority sites
• New site needs to make use of Digg
• Delicious – number of people that have clicked on a page, book marked it in Delicious
• Google Reader – ranks how many have subscribed to an RSS Feed

Time to understand all of this now.

Search 5.0

  Two examples:

• Mahalo.com
• Hakia.com

Regarding the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft:

• Yahoo is a credible search engine and Microsoft needs the traffic
• This may give ask.com the opportunity to rise up

Yahoo made a search announcement at the conference.

• The search is more enhanced, you create your own apps.
• Bringing in media, photos, video…
• Task links
• Structured data of ratings and price, hours with addresses
• User choice (remove a listing or report it is spam)

This is about giving the user more control, another form of personalization, add or turn off enhancements

  Learn more about it at http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/open.html

  This is what Yahoo! claims:

  Everyone Wins.Site Owners:
Boost site traffic quality and quantity with visibly differentiated search results through this free program.
Searchers:A more relevant and efficient search experience with deep links, product reviews, prices, photos and more from preferred sites.
Get more information from http://www.ysearchblog.com
Different sites will provide search information, they feel there will be an open playing field for everyone not jus the Yahoo! Properties

Next  I will share my notes from additional sessions.