Google is not just the #1 search engine, they’re also a voting machine. They determine, through numerous factors, if your site deserves to be on the first page of search results or the next, or the last. Google is always trying to improve the quality of their search results. One way of doing this, is to follow the search user from the search (at Google) to the site they found in the search. Before Google Analytics, Google had no way of doing this. Now, they can remain tethered to the search user if they click on a search result that has Google Analytics installed.

For Google, it let’s them know if the search was a good search or a bad one. And that is determined by the bounce rate. How long or how short does a user stay at the website/page they found from the search. If they don’t stay very long, like less than 20 seconds, we can assume that whatever content they saw on the site they landed on was not what they were originally searching for, or was not compelling/engaging enough for them to stick around.

Whether you are Google or the owner of the site, knowing your analytics and reviewing them is pinnacle to understanding what your site visitors are experiencing. Having 15,000 unique visitors is great. Finding out they all came and went in one hour and you’re bounce rate was 85% for that day means that your marketing was awesome to drive traffic, but your content on the page scared them all away. And the bounce rate is just one many juicy analytics that is being collected all day long, month after month.

If you’re too afraid to look at your analytics, email me and I’ll introduce you to a world you need to know.

Cheers,
Richard Lee, Chief at Large
The Agency @ PILLAR
chief@pillarsupport.com

Second, you need a site that gives your audience what they’re searching for without requiring them to search further for it. In other words, site visitors should not have to think too hard to find more of what they’re looking for. And with today’s limited time to do anything and short attention spans, one of the best ways to serve site visitors is with pictures and video. And, even that visual content can be tagged to help your SEO.

The third prong is community and it’s not just a Web 2.0 requirement. We all have constituents to begin with. As we communicate to that base, more join the conversation, even if just to read it (versus contributing to it). Enabling access to this conversation (through blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, LinkingIn, dragging people by their hair while holding a club) gives your constituents ‘inside’ access to what’s happening within an organization, a kind of online voyeurism, that helps spread a company’s ‘culture’ online. This works well for restaurants as it does consultants and most every kind of company in between.

All of the above is possible without any of our help but unifying it into a cohesive, seamless, time-saving, audience-attracting package is what we do best. And, teaching you how to use it, harness it, and steer the best course is a part of that too. Email me and let’s chat further.

Cheers,
Richard Lee, Chief at Large
The Agency @ PILLAR
chief@pillarsupport.com

]]> http://pillarcc.com/blog/2010/03/simple-seo/feed/ 0 http://pillarcc.com/blog/2009/03/cooking-with-garlic-why-content-is-king/ http://pillarcc.com/blog/2009/03/cooking-with-garlic-why-content-is-king/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:48:13 +0000 Richard Lee http://therightclickblog.com/?p=153

You don’t need a lot of garlic in order to cook with it. Just as you don’t need more than one website to get the job done. With garlic, all you need to do is take one big clove and chop that up into small pieces so that the whole pan is covered. With your website, Google rewards those with many pages of content, and a lot of content on those pages. The more, the merrier. And, if that content is made fresh periodically, you are on your way to more quickly improving your Google PageRank.

You see, web pages which constitute a website, need to be chock full of content. You’ve heard of the expression, “Content is King,” well this is essential to the web, and is essential to ranking better with Google. Like the garlic analogy, you are using your content to cover more surface area across the Internet, even though it’s quite virtual. The content on your pages must constitute a collective tome of information, rather than a pamphlet.

How do you get content on your site?

There are various ways.

a. At development time, and this is rare, you have all your content ready to be copied and pasted by your developer onto your site. I say this is rare because often people who are developing their site are completely unprepared with any content. A lot of people unfortunately believe that programmers are the people who create the content for your website. Thankfully that’s not the case but site owners are still left with the daunting task of creating content.

b. If content isn’t ready during development or just before going live, then there needs to be a way (besides calling up your web developer to add the content–9 months later–to add it in a hurry) for the non-programmer site owner to add the content themselves. That could be through content management (either a customized solution or Joomla) or it could be through their blog.

c. The blog is a great way of adding loads of fresh content on th web and onto your website ONLY if you have the time and ability to do so.

d. The ability to create content oneself is essential for content creation. That includes some key factors such as free time, ability to write and ability to spell. If you are missing one of those essentials then you will need to hire someone to write the content for you.

e. Hiring someone to write the content will free you to do other things. That person must also have the same passion about the topic, as it relates to your website’s service or product, as you do or else the message will be confusing or the content will not be useful.

f. The hiring of this person could be several brilliant interns or one expensive copywriter. The decision is purely based on your own needs and ability to pay for great help.

g. Content is not just in the form of great writing. It can also be beautiful pictures and engaging video. However, since we use words to describe what we are looking for, those other forms of media will require the right words to be associated with them too.

-Richard Lee
The Right Click Technology Update
The Official Blog and Newsletter of PILLAR: The ONLY tech support call you need to make.

Your website and how it relates to other web pages across the Internet, is one of the most cost-effective ways of informing people what services or products you offer. And, the people you are reaching out to include those in your own Rolodex, as well as all the people doing searches for companies just like your own.

How do you get on the first page of a search result?

First, you need a website. You need an official place to call your own and where you and Google can send people when they come calling.

Secondly, you need to see where you stand with respect to how visible you are online. Though there are a bunch of tools available all over the place, I recommend you check out our very own tool: keywordfriendly.com.

Third, you need to strategize based on what your report detailed. Generally speaking, you should beef up the content on your site so that there is more of it and it is informative in showcasing your products or your service capabilities. You should also beef up your content on other sites that contain snippets of this same information. That could be an industry-related directory or LinkedIn, for example.

You should also consider adding more content online, and as frequently and consistently as possible. The easiest and most effective way of doing that is with a blog. You can start blogging for free with Wordpress.com (what we use). Google rewards sites and people who contribute fresh information online. As long as that information is pertinent to your product or service, then you also stand a chance to improve what is known as your Google PageRank.Your Google PageRank is a number from 0 to 10 that is assigned to every page on your website. It gives you an idea of how popular that page is online. Google.com gets a PageRank of 10, as you can imagine, it’s very popular. If you’ve been online for a while, you should expect a PageRank of 3 on your home page. If you’re active in creating fresh new content then you can expect a PageRank of 4+. In addition to that, the old adage “It’s not who you know, but who knows you,” is very relevant to how Google works. If you do a search on Google.com for yourdomainname.com (whatever that might be), you can see how many other pages, besides your own website pages, reference yours. And, you don’t need to count the results, just look at the top right and it will show you the total amount.

Our online tool at www.keywordfriendly.com will do all of the dirty work in telling you PageRank and Inbound link details, and a whole lot more. Use it as often as you like, and use it whenever you get any press written about you on a news site, blog or website.

Google is more than just the world’s largest search engine, it is also a voting machine. The decision on whether you appear on the first page of a search results is not in the hands of a single person, but in yours and the democracy of the Internet. You can change the vote by following the suggestions above. It won’t happen overnight but it is possible and for a lot less money than you can imagine.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Richard

This will be an ongoing case study to discover and experience the Paris Hilton Effect regarding online marketing, search engine visibility and brand competition (ie Hilton brand hotels versus Paris Hilton slut brand).

Cheers,
Richard

The Right Click – Technology Update

The controversial Michael Phelps picture

The bong manufacturing industry just got the boost it needed when Michael Phelps was busted for inhaling from what appears, according to eyewitnesses, a bong. Plus, partgoers, where the bong-smoking image was taken, said Phelps was “out of control the moment he got here.”

Well, now that it’s online, it is going to really get out of control. Try Googling “phelps bong” and see what you get. When I started blogging about this yesterday at around 4p, a Google search yielded “417,000″ results. At 3p the next day, the same search is yield over 1 million results, plus one (this post).

This is what I call the Paris Hilton effect in that bad publicity turns out to be awesome Google visibility. Everyone with a blog starts blogging about Paris’s latest night vision home-made video and before you know it, you can no longer find a Hilton Hotel in Paris, without first learning about Paris Hilton. This is how search engine optimization works. All you have to do is drown your competition out in terms of online buzz. Google is not just the world’s largest search engine, it’s also a voting machine. The more popular you are, the more likely you’ll appear at the top half of page one of results.

If only Michael Phelps were the spokesperson for a glass bong manufacturer.
Cheers,
Richard

The Right Click – Technology Update

There is no magic in what Google is doing, with all do respect. What you contain in terms of words, be it keywords or key terms, or just the prose that makes up an article, is what a search engine collects and is what a web searcher uses in their search.

Case in point. Try Googling the following: “Boopig Franchise Easy Returns” (keep the quotes so the search is limited to precisely these words and in this order)

If you found this blog post (note: it took 5 days for Google to Index it), it’s because the power of blogging coupled with how Google simply reads the content of the page, allows you to search for terms that are found within the page. In this case, the search term is very specific and unique in that since it means nothing, and is a unique (if not odd) set of terms, it can more easily be found against a trillion other pages.

Look at how the search yielded the following results:

The Right Click

Using that philosophy, one can apply that practice to website analytics, which is the measurement of data collected by a web server. It contains an assortment of interesting and very useable information about your site visitors. If you thought that this sort of data was only available for e-commerce sites, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that most websites have this information. Getting access to it is a different story.

Though there are many brands, we often use Google Analytics. First, the code is free to use. Second, installation is very easy. Third, it automatically generates a simple, handsome report that easily shows web data on the site for the last month and will compare the last two months together. Google Analytics also allows Google to track the user experience after a user finds you via a search. This is how Google can best provide quality search results for people.

Google Analytics

Cheers,
Richard