This past Thursday, May 6th I noticed the inclusion of 2 KML files and a custom Google Map in the universal search results for my name. I’m not sure of the exact date this change took place, but it seems to have been on either last Wednesday or Thursday.

There are currently 2 KML files on page one and a custom Google Map on page two. As you will see on the image below, the first KML file is hosted on justinblase.com and the second KML file is from a Google custom map I created.

On the second page of the search results there is a Google Maps result for the custom map I created. I am curious to see if this is a test that will be ending shortly or if we can expect to continue to see maps results (outside of the traditional 7,3, & 1 pack) within Google SERPS.

Page One

Page Two

Over the last couple years Google has been moving more towards a universal search model that provides searchers more diverse results than simply listings for related static pages on the web.  Over the course of the last year and a half you have probably noticed YouTube videos, Google Shopping results, book results, blog posts and many more different types of results returned for certain search queries.

The most recent addition to Google search engine results pages is related forum posts.  Google introduced these types of results on September 30, 2009.  For certain types of search phrases, you may now find a series of recent (or in some cases not so recent) forum posts.

Here is an example for a recent search for “cooking chili in a crockpot”:

I have also noticed that the same exact thing is happening with Yahoo! Answers posts for several “How To” types of questions.

Google has made mention of placing more emphasis on returning relevant “real-time” results for search queries… this seems to be a step in that direction.

This opens up an additional reason for webmasters and Internet marketers to add forum marketing to their overall strategy.  Not only does having an active forum presence in your market beneficial for ranking easily in organic search results as in the example above, it provides a great opportunity to establish a voice of authority and build some nice backlinks from high page rank authority sites.

Google announced today that it has added an enhancement to the seach snippet that is displayed to users on search engine results pages.  Prior to today, search snippets were only comprised of the META description provided by webmasters, a snippet randomly taken off the page by Google, or a combination of both.

From today on, seach snippets on results pages can also include named anchors in a contextual text link format to help users jump directly to specific locations on the page rather than always being taken to the top of the page and being forced to scroll through all of the page content in order to locate the desired information.

Here are examples of 2 search snippets that include the new named anchors:

What Does This Mean For Search Marketers?

It appears that there is now a good reason to include named anchors in page content.  It would be a safe bet to assume that search snippets containing a relevant named anchor that is now clickable and blue instead of an entirely plain text snippet could lead to an increase in click throughs from organic search results.

There is some debate amongst the professional SEO community as to whether or not “first link priority” is or is not observed by Google.  For those of you that are unfamiliar to “first link priority”, it relates to observations made by several SEOs over the past year and a half that claim Google places a higher level of “importance” on the very first link it crawls on a page. (You may notice the anchor text of the first link on this blog is ‘home’…. not exactly what I should be targeting with this blog… but oh well, this is just for fun)

The phenomenon of first link priority is important to the internal linking structure of your site because the anchor text and link URL you choose to put in this location allegedly get the majority of love from the Big G.  If I were to tweak one thing on this blog to ensure that I was adhering to all SEO best practices, it would be to change the anchor text in the first navigational tab at the top of the page from ‘Home’ to something like ‘SEO Blog’… of course, since my logo is also clickable I would need to utilize some fancy CSS work to ensure that the ‘SEO Blog’ link is appearing above all other links in my blog’s code.

I have not personally been able to determine on my own whether or not “First Link Priority” is reality or simply “guru talk”… though to be safe I tend to to observe it and structure pages accordingly during the site development phase for clients.  This can be done via CSS or in tables if using HTML.

In the current search engine marketing climate, it’s no secret that a large number of relevant (or semi relevant) external links pointing back to your website can help give you a leg up in organic search engine rankings.

Unfortunately, it’s not exactly easy to secure a large enough number of relevant links, so creativity is a must if you plan to edge out your competitors in organic search rankings.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have been known to reward sites for certain types of backlinks one day and then “slap” the sites the next day, causing a significant drop in search engine rankings.  In order to ensure that your website’s traffic is not solely at the mercy of particular algorithm change, make sure you take time to plan out a link building strategy ahead of time that utilizes various link types.

How Is This Achieved?

To make sure your backlink profile has enough variation to weather search engine algorithm updates, one should keep a few things in mind:

1. Stay away from individuals or companies that offer to submit your site to several thousand website directories.Not only is directory submission rather pointless in my opinion (aside from about 50 solid directories), companies that offer these types of services rarely vary anchor text, page titles and descriptions which is essential to developing a natural looking backlink profile.
2. Be creative! One of the most important keys to successful link building (and online marketing in general) is creativity.  It pays to secure links from sites that aren’t linking out to hundreds of other sites.  Step outside the box and think of ways to get links from these authority sites and your rankings will thank you.
3. Always be ready to leave a link!Some of the best opportunities to leave a backlink come when you least expect (and most likely don’t actually have time to drop a link).  Keep a spreadsheet of potential places to drop a backlink and make sure to check it weekly so you don’t get behind.

I decided to write this blog post today due to the number of e-commerce site owners I have worked with that are not aware of the benefits involved with utilizing product data feeds to increase site visibility.  Not only is data feed marketing an excellent way to get your brand in front of more eyeballs, it’s generally quite inexpensive and easy to setup and manage.

A data feed is a file (commonly in xml, csv, or other format) that allows you to easily upload your site’s entire product inventory to online shopping portals or comparison engines.  A few example of these type of sites include Google Product Search (Google Base), Yahoo! Shopping, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com, ShopLocal, Gift.com and more.

Many of the sites charge a fee to list your inventory, but it’s almost always worth the charge due to the large volume of traffic and high search engine rankings these sites tend to have.  For those of you that would like an introduction in data feed marketing, but aren’t interested in paying a cost per click or a cost per conversion, the ideal place to start is with Google Base.

Google Base is a service that Google offers that allows merchants to upload a data feed of their inventory to Google Product Search.  There is no charge by Google for the service, and it is a great way to gain more exposure for your online store.

There are two main benefits to using Google Base:

1.  Your products are added to Google Products. Google products is a service provided by Google that assists consumers with comparing products based on pricing, location and several other criteria.  It is a completely free service for both product buyers and product services.

Below is an example of a Google products search for “black and decker weed wacker”

2.  Your products can appear in the natural results as “Shopping Results”. This is undoubtedly the biggest benefit to using Google base since the majority of online searches start with Google.com.  For certain types (not all of them, usually longer tailed search phrases) of product searches, Google currently delivers 2 to 4 “Shopping Results” mixed into the natural search rankings.  These shopping results are often times found about 3 listings down in the results, but have been known to appear number 1 for less popular search terms.

Notice in the example below, by using Google Base, one can essentially achieve a #4 Google position for a search term with 195,000 competing pages.  Not too shabby, eh?

Below is a screenshot of a Google.com search for “Black and Decker weed wacker”

There are some steps that need to be taken to properly export your product inventory in the format that Google Base accepts, so if your e-commerce platform has an extensions or plugins available to help automate the data feed export process, they are almost always worth using.

Also, just because you add your data feed to Google Base doesn’t automatically mean you your products will show up in the natural results, often times product descriptions and titles must be tweaked in order to gain the desired visibility.

Do you have questions about whether or not your website can benefit from data feed marketing?  Ask below!

For decades now, businesses both small and large have spent a significant portion of their marketing budget on listings in print directories like the Yellow Pages. Over the years,  it has proven to be an effective method of advertising as many consumers turned to phone book directories to get in touch with service providers.

Over the past few years however, many business have stopped renewing advertising in the directories due to lack of effectiveness, and it’s really quite easy to understand why when you take a look at how Yellow Pages advertising stacks up in terms of effectiveness vs. online marketing via paid search or organic search engine optimization.

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3 Reasons Why The Yellow Pages Stink Compared To Search Marketing

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1.  Consumers are flooded with info.

Take a look at your local Yellow Pages and search for an attorney, chiropractor, lawn service, etc. and you will find several pages of ads… many times with the total number of ads into the hundreds.  Think about this…. people are paying to be in a directory listed right next to all of their local competitors.  Not only do you have to bank to on potential customers picking up the Yellow Pages, you have to bank on the small chance that your little ad will stand out amongst the dozens/hundreds of competitors.

With search marketing, websites that are optimized for local search terms can easily dominate the results on major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.  This works well for companies due to the fact that more and more consumers are utilizing search engines for information instead of print directories.  Plus, if your site is ranked at the top of the search engine results, you (and you alone) stand out as the “authority” business… you don’t have to worry about consumers comparing your “ad” to dozens of other ads, research clearly shows that searchers favor the site that is at the top in the organic search engine rankings.

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2.   The Number Of Print Directories Continues To Grow

It seems that each year, another print directory enters the market.  Many companies feel they are forced into purchasing advertising simply because their competition is doing it.  This is causing companies to throw a larger percentage of their marketing budget at a medium that is slowly suffocating.  Do yourself a favor, don’t fall for these new directories… put the cash towards some optimization for a couple targeted local keywords.

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3.  You Are Stuck With Your Ad For A Year

Another real disadvantage of advertising in print directories is the fact that once your ad is submitted, it cannot be edited.  You get once chance each year to update your listing, and if something changes, or if you would like to add some additional messaging, you are S.O.L.

When marketing via online search, your ad (which can be a landing page on a website, a paid ad, a banner, etc.) has the ability to be edited at any point in time, with the changes takign effect immediately.  Not only does this provide more flexibility for advertisers, it allows for much more targeted advertising as messages can be varied towards time of year, location of the site visitor, etc.

The three most common meta tags that are used in web development are the title, keywords and description tags.  Over the course of the last decade there has been a lot of variation in the emphasis placed on each of these tags from a search engine optimization standpoint.

There still seems to be a little bit of confusion around the topic, so here is a breakdown of how the 3 most common meta tags impact search engine rankings at the time of this posting.

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The Title Tag

The title tag is the only tag that carries any real weight in terms of search engine placement currently.  It is an absolute must to include your main keyword phrase at the beginning of your title tag, and it’s not a bad idea to integrate a secondary keyword towards the end of the title as well if possible.  The more you are able to integrate these keywords while keeping the title readable, the better off you will be.

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The Keywords Tag

The keywords META tag has lost it’s power when it comes to the effectiveness of tags aiding in organic search rankings.  It was commonplace in the late 90’s to see sites jamming dozens, even hundreds of keywords into the title tag.  It didn’t take long for the search engines to realize that this tag offers no real value when it comes to delivering relevant results to searchers… and for that reason this tag has been dead for a long time.  Does this mean that adding keywords to this tag at all?  It’s completely up to you… I have tested both ways and neither seems to matter, so do what you please.

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The Description Tag

The description META tag does not add any value in achieving higher search engine rankings.  However, you still want to incorporate your main keyword phrases into it for a couple reasons.

1. Search engines like Google may or may not decide to use your META description as the site description that is displayed in search results (sometimes they use it… sometimes they grab other snippets of text from your site).  In order to attain the highest number of clicks from organic searches as possible, make sure this description is crafted in a manner that assures the searcher that your site provides content that is valuable and “dead on” in terms of what the searcher was searching for.
2. When the keywords in your description match the keywords searchers use in their queries, they will appear bolded in the page descriptions in the search results, which helps in attracting the attention of searchers and increases your chances of getting more click throughs from your organic listings.

A recent study performed by Enquiro Research indicated just how important a top Google ranking is to your search marketing.  The graphic below shows a “heatmap” of an eye tracking study for a google search of “digital cameras”.  Areas of greater intensity (think doppler radar tracking a thunderstorm) indicate where users looked the most.

The graphic clearly shows that searchers give far more attention to the top 3 to 5 listings, with the most focus on listing number one.

(the thick, red, horizontal line indicates the fold – the point at which users need to scroll down to view content that appears lower on the page)

This graphic shows that a lot of of attention is also given to the entire page title and page description of the listing in the number one spot indicating that a well written title and a description that includes relevent info along with a call to action can go a long way to driving targeted traffic to your site.

While pay per click advertising can provide another great avenue for delivering quality traffic to your website, this graphic shows how much more attention users give to organic results over sponsored results in the right column.

Keep in mind, this study is based on one particular search term (digital cameras) and it’s hard to say if these patterns would be consistent with all searchers and search terms.

Do you have questions about how to increase your site’s organic rankings?  E-mail me!