SEO by Keli

I wish I had posted on this when I first saw it happening… the differences were amazing and the gap much wider then (around the end of the summer) than now.

Basically, through searching, I found that Google was treating queries differently depending on whether or not the words in the search phrase were capitalized or not.

According to Google, they don’t treat the queries different:

Capitalization

Google searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for george washington, George Washington, and gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN will all return the same results.

Which I think is funny because as of TODAY, gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN and george washington have a difference of 1,000,000 in the serps:

Results 1 – 10 of about 57,000,000 for george washington

and

Results 1 – 10 of about 58,000,000 for gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN

The results look the same, but you can’t help but wonder why that serp count is so far off.

I took two screenshots of Attorney/Lawyer related searches to illustrate this as well:

new york lawyers

New York Lawyers

This illustrates the difference in the results (not big, not like it was this summer) as well as the serp count.

Domain Names. All the good ones are gone yet more and more new businesses start everyday wanting to stake out their online property. How do you select a good one?

Here are some guidelines based upon my 12 years of experience in this industry as an ISP owner, a domain reseller, search engine optimization specialist and Web host operator.

When I’m asked how to select a good domain my typical answer is: select something that is easy to remember, easy to spell, nice and short, something that isn’t easily confused and something that doesn’t contain dashes. You want to be able to rattle off your domain name to the average Joe/Joette on the street so that they can go home and remember it, know how to spell it and not have to account for dashes. If you can follow these steps you’ll be in good shape.

We can get more in depth however and talk about other things to take into consideration:

Branding
If you’re planning on branding yourself/your company/etc, you’ll probably want a domain that reflects that, one you’ll keep for the long haul.

Does a good, keyword-rich domain help with SEO?
Not really. There are many other factors I work with when optimizing a site. If a domain name contains keywords separated by dashes it might help minimally when someone links back to a site, but that’s about it. There is a visual component in the SERPs that has to do more with humans than ranking… if you have your keywords in your domain, they’ll be highlighted in the SEPRs, thus calling attention to itself.

Here is an example of that (see how property and listing is highlighted?):

Dashes
I don’t like dashes. They’re hard to remember for some people and when you tell someone a domain with dashes, they’ll inevitably go home and type in the domain sans dashes which sends them to an entirely different site. In some cases, it’s a last resort to get a domain that relates to your company however.

Keeping it Real
Really take a real hard look at your domain before you click the buy button. I have a client (and I won’t post the entire domain name, the first two words illustrate my point) who has the following domain:

AnAlbuquerque…… .com

-or as it shows up in the address bar-

analbuqureque….. .com

See anything strange there? I’m not even sure my client realizes what you see in the address bar after clicking on her site but us geeks sure do. The domain name was already in use and had established a history with Google by the time it came to us, so there was no going back.

TLD
Top level domain (.com, .org, ,net). Try to get a .com always, if possible. The non techy of us humans think the only TLD is .com and it’s the most commercially visible too.

Legalities
Do NOT register domains of other business/companies. They can and will come after you.

Variations & Registering Multiple Domains
I get asked this one a lot… *should I get the .com, org and .net of my domain?* – usually it’s a good idea but I’ve never really run into a situation where NOT doing this has caused any problems. I have clients with many, many domains… they want to use them all to help their *SEO* effort but don’t understand how that can do more damage than good (you can 301 em in safely but that’s all I’d suggest using them for). I sometimes suggest getting all the variations of your company/business just so your competition won’t get them.

EX:

I have AlbuquerqueWebDesign.com, AlbuquerqueWebDesigner.com, Albuquerque-Web-Design.com JUST so my local competition won’t buy them. I have Realtor clients that do the same thing…. one guy has over 200 domains!

Today Cuil debuted… a new search engine that has been touted as possible threat to Google.  I’m not sure about that last bit… it seems like Yahoo or MSN would have overtaken the giant first, but you never know.  That’s one of the things that make this industry exciting.

Cuil seemed to be getting more of a bad rap than good one around the SEO forums/blogs today.  I tried some queries myself and wasn’t that impressed… but it’s the first day right?  I put in one of my phrases only to see my cilent’s banner come up with an unrelated site (on a result that wasn’t my site).  My site came up with some strange graphic I had never seen before.  When I put in a client’s main phrase, her banner showed up on a competitors site – Oi. I tried another query, then clicked the “2″ at the bottom of the page and got a “page not found” type of message. The layout is certainly different from what we’re used to.  It seems unbalanced and that bothers my neurotic mind. One of their big claims is having more pages indexed than any other engine.. but a bag full of trash is a bag full of trash.  I never did get the “I have more pages indexed than you” battle.  There was also a mention that Cuil doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on backlinks.

Hopefully these are all just growing pains.  It’s nice to have competition out there, keeps everyone on their toes.

Lots of buzz about Adobe going to lengths to get Flash indexed, crawled, read, etc by the search engines. This includes navigation, links and *everything in between*. Images will still have issues as they contain no text… but other bits might be open for business.

Links:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080701-095415
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/google-learns-to-crawl-flash.html

The first and most important step of any search engine optimization (SEO) campaign is the keyword research. You and I can think of a lot of great keyword phrases as possible optimization candidates… but ask yourself, are humans searching on these phrases? After all if no one is searching on a particular phrase, then that phrase certainly won’t bring traffic to your site. It’s absolutely imperative that your site is optimized with phrases that people search on. To find these phrase we have to conduct some keyword research, research based upon your seed list.

So how do I create a seed list?

I tell my clients to create a list of every phrase they can think of that has to do with their product(s) and/or service(s). Have their co-workers, parents, grandparents, pets (well maybe not pets) submit their ideas as well.

EX:
An Albuquerque attorney might have the following phrases in their seed list:

personal injury
dog bites
divorce law
child custody

Sometimes, depending on the niche, the above exercise can create enough phrases for you to start with. Sometimes it doesn’t. That’s when you get a bit more aggressive about where you find these phrases:

1) server log files
2) competitor sites
3) thesaurus
4) online bidding tools
5) client
6) offline advertising

Let’s go over these:

1) Server Log Files – Looking in your log files is a great way to find extra phrases and ideas. When you dump these in your keyword research tool of choice (I use Wordtracker first, then export into KeywordDiscovery.com) you can get the hard numbers on these phrases. I use Wordtracker first because it has such a great thesaurus tool. Sometimes when you’re so entrenched into a niche, it’s hard to think outside the box and think of things the average searcher might type in a search engine.

2) Competitor Sites – look at what they’re using in their title, on their page and in their navigation. This may give you some other ideas for phrases.

3) Thesaurus – check with an online thesaurus (or offline thesaurus if you still believe in books!) for other ideas. For example, “shoe” might yield:

sandal
boot
clog
heels
children’s shoes
snow shoes

This is one of the most important tactics in the list (IMO). Sometimes you’ll find that clients are so entrenched in their niche that they don’t think outside of the box.

4) Online Bidding Tools – Even though I don’t use them for gathering my search metrics (bidding history is not the same data as overall search data) they’re great for generating other phrases; just ignore the search numbers and any other numeric data.

5) Client – as suggested above, ask your client to compile you a list of phrases using the criteria state.

6) Offline Advertising – look at trade magazines, pay close attention to commercial and print ads that are related to the product/services you or your client work with.

After you have their seed list, you’ll then want to make sure you have all permutations of the phrases (lawyer, lawyers, attorney, attorneys – as in the case of our attorney example).

Locally, Nationally or Globally

What about location? Is your client offering services locally, nationally or globally? Make sure that if you’re client is seeking local business/traffic only, that they send you these geographical areas along with their seed list (note: I actually send out a focus analysis that allows them to send their seed list as well as all the geographical areas they want to target):

EX:
Using our attorney example, we might get these areas:

Albuquerque
Rio Rancho
Placitas
Corrales

In this case, our attorney would take a case from any of the areas above. Our list might look something like this now:

Albuquerque personal injury lawyer (lawyers, attorney, attorneys)
Rio Rancho personal injury lawyer (lawyers, attorney, attorneys)
Placitas personal injury lawyer (lawyers, attorney, attorneys)
Corrales personal injury lawyer (lawyers, attorney, attorneys)
etc

The list, it grows!

If your client wants a site that competes at the national/global level (meaning they’ll take traffic/clients outside of their local region), you don’t have to worry about geo-targeting.

Once you’ve completed the tasks above (or your client), you’ll have a great list of phrases all ready for analysis (competitiveness, search metrics, etc).

Tips

1) Do NOT include words like:

The Best
Green
Great
Excellent
etc

2) Make sure your geographical areas are unique.

Example:

Cooks County

There are several Cooks Counties in the United States. If you find yourself in this position, try to find other geographical areas that could be possible candidates for optimization. If not, you’ll be competing against other areas. This optimization effort would be best spent optimizing your site for unique areas.

This article nicely sums up what I’ve been trying to convey to clients for a long time now:

*Target Niches.*

While “mens clothing” in the previous example may be one of the most popular clothing related searches, it unfortunately has a lot of competition. If you do a search on Google, you’ll find it returns over 1 million results for that phrase. While this type of phrase may gain you a lot of traffic, achieving a top ranking may prove difficult and time-consuming.

In addition, you will normally find visitors who search on very broad keyword categories purchasing less often than someone who knows exactly what they want. A good example of such a niche phrase would be “custom baseball hats.” The benefit of “custom baseball hats” is that it’s both a popular search phrase and it only has about 2000 pages on Google competing against it. That’s much less competitive than the 1 million results returned for “mens clothing.”

WordTracker calls the popularity and competition ratio the “KEI” or Keyword Effectiveness Index. The higher the KEI, the more effective the keyword will be for you.

Therefore, targeting relatively popular niche keywords has the following four advantages:

1. Niche keywords still produce a nice flow of traffic if you’re careful to pick ones that still have good popularity.

2. Niche keywords will significantly increase your chance of success. Achieving a top ranking will be much easier with a niche keyword phrase versus a very broad, highly popular phrase. No top ranking can be guaranteed in an organic search engine like Google. There are simply too many variables. Therefore, you’ll greatly increase your chances of success by choosing less competitive keyword phrases. Work smarter, not harder as I like to say.

3. Niche keywords will save you time. While you could use various tools and research to achieve a top ranking for “mens clothing,” the time required to do so may not be worthwhile. Let your competitor waste their efforts on the ultra-competitive phrases. In the same amount of time they spend trying to achieve a single top ranking for your industry’s most popular phrase, you could achieve top rankings on twenty other phrases.

4. Niche keywords yield more sales per visitor. That’s because these keywords are more targeted. Therefore, these prospects have a better idea of what they want. If they find it on your site at the right price, then your chances for a sale are much greater.

The full article can be found here:
Top 5 Tips for Choosing the Best Keywords
Most helpful read indeed.