Conference Buddies

The following is a summary of a session at SMX West 2009 on Search Engine Friendly Web Design presented by Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

5 Basic Rules of Web Design

When centered on the user, there are specific rules that form the foundation of successful web design. These are:

1. Easy to Read

The code and text should be written in a way where it is easy to read. It should continue the “scent of information” (contain relevant keywords from acquisition source) so that a user can easily discern that they are in the right place.

2. Easy to Navigate

The web site should be, first and foremost, designed for users and searchers, not for search engines. All elements that appear to be clickable should be and users should have a sense of where they are at when navigating the site.

3. Easy to Find

Being easy to find refers to both the before and after of users arriving on a page. The web site should be found/linked from major search engines/relevant sites. Important elements and contents should be found above the fold (portion of the site that is shown upon initial loading without scrolling). Contact information should be easy to find, usually in the header, footer, about us, or contact area.

4. Consistent layout, design & labeling

Consistency communicates a sense of trust, security, reliably, and branding. Consistency is based on many factors, such as, use of space, color scheme, logo usage, placement of content, etc.

5. Quick to download

Speed is determined by both actual and perceived download. If what users want is hard to see at first, then the download appears to be slower. Larger downloads can be applicable if the important elements can be found easily.

3 Building Blocks to SEO

The build blocks to SEO are centered on how crawlers/robots can index your site. These are:

1. Text Indexing

If the content of a site does not have any text or “indexable” content, it won’t rank well, which in turn, makes it difficult to find.

Some other important factors:

• A site should make use of Primary Text, which includes title tags, visible copy, text within the header, and anchor tags/links as all search engines index these and use them in determining rankings.
• If time allows, a site should make use of Secondary Text, which includes meta tags, filenames/domain names, and alt text, as only some search engines index these.
• Breadcrumbs can help a lot, giving a sense of organization to users, as well as provide relevant keywords to links.
• If applicable, try to use captions for images because visible copy weighs more heavily than alt text.

2. Follow Links

The link component refers to internal liking within the site. These should factor in site navigation scheme, as well as other page interlinking.

Some other factors include:

Navigation menu

From most search engine friendly to least friendly:

Text Links > Nav buttons > Image Maps > Form/DHTML Menus > Flash

If using non-text links, always provide 2 forms of navigation. 1 for target audience and 1 for search engines. The search engine friendly one can be a navigation placed within the footer.

Embedded Text Links

Text links placed within visible copy can help to enhance usability and search engine friendliness. However, it is important to not overdo it. Too many embedded text links can decrease usability and legibility.

Site Maps

Site maps do not refer to the URL list that can be submitted to search engines. In this case, a site map refers to a page that provides users a hierarchy to your site structure. When creating a site map, it should not just be a list of URLs or links. Having annotations great helps with legibility.

Others

There a number of other helpful ways to improve usability and search engine friendliness. Some involved linking to related pages, upselling, and having a horizontal navigation vs. a vertical navigation.

3. Site Popularity (Link Development)

Popularity is based on number of external links, the quality of external links, and click popularity.

Some other factors that influence popularity include:

• Having substantial and unique content
• How other sites link to your site (What is the anchor text being used? What are the annotations?)
• Having keyword rich text on homepage
• Having at least one crawl-friendly navigation (even if it’s the footer)
• Having links to relevant information/sites
• Having a visible site map

Miscellaneous

Some other factors to think about in regard to search engine optimization and web design:

• Always design for searchers, not search engines
• When redesigning a site, SEO should be put into consideration in the initial phases and not after the site is built
• Test the usability of a site to determine the effectiveness of a site. If users can’t find the information, most likely, it’s not good for SEO either

• 1.0 was search keyword by volume. Now we have grown past 1.0 to look at navigational query searches and demographic searches.
• Good tools to keep in mind: Google Ad Planner, MS AD Intelligence, and Yahoo Buss Index
• Leverage your Site Search for keyword source
• Google organic is also a great keyword source
• Two great tools but costly to track competitor keyword reporting tools from: ComScore / Hitwise
• Experts recommend using keyword tools to research, collect data and as data point but not for automated optimization

Speakers/Panelists:
Lance Loveday, Founder, President and CEO, Closed Loop Marketing
Eric Papczun, Director of Natural Search Optimization, Performics

Conference Notes/Description:

• 1/3 of searches are ready for purchase
• 77% are for research
• 50-70% bounce rate for landing pages

awareness > consideration (clicks) > (post-click) preference > purchase

Holiday pages:

• Valentine’s day offer – after valentine change to story about valentine’s day surrounding the gift purchased = fresh content and keeping content
• sitemap = search engine customer service
• 800 # gives sense of: not beging afraid to talk to me, reputable, established

ROI = Visibility x Effectiveness

ROI = Traffic x Conversion

ROI = SEO x Usability

SEO, Design, Usability

It is possible to have all 3, it’s just more work & planning
Goes hand in hand.

Flash

Progressive Enhancement – still allow SE to see flash elements
ie. Flash on left side, and static scenes and descriptions on right hand side

Usability

Good usability does not make the user think. Everything is spelled out and easy to find.

1. 25%-400% increase in conversion from usability enhancement
2. functional tagline: tell people what you do
3. Men and Women navigate through the site differently:
   • Men scan the nav bar first
   • Women more interested in looking at images and read content
4. Length of URL does matter
   • long URL = complex and a turn off (2.5 times less likely to click on than short URLs)

User judges your website within 1/20th of a second

• 75% of web users admit making judgments about the credibility of an organization based on the design of its web site.
  -Fogg BJ Standford Guidelines
  • lack of clutter; openness
  • navigation
  • professional design

Resources

• Book: Web Design for ROI

Speakers/Panelists:
Keith Dieruf, Manager, Online Marketing, Ameriprise Financial
Jody Farmer, Vice President, Strategic Marketing, CreditCards.com
Jane Flint, Manager, Kaiser Permanente Internet Marketing Services
Brian Kaminski, EVP and Managing Director, iProspect San Francisco
Karen Weber, Vice President, eMarketing, Irwin Union Bank

Conference Notes/Description:

The 12 most common strategic mistakes that companies make in their SEO and paid search initiatives and gain insight into these critically important concepts surrounding search marketing and its role within the entire marketing mix.  Advice and perspective on these dozen critical mistakes, how to avoid them, and how understanding them can dramatically increase your search marketing results.

Mistake #1: Failing to Set Measurable Goals for Your Campaigns

Most CMO’s don’t set goals when it relates to Search Marketing.  When you do that, how can you:

• Improve performance
• Gauge success
• Set baseline measurement
• Able to flag things working vs. not working

Mistake #2:  Failing to Assign $ Values to Every “Conversion Action” Available on Your Site

Many actions help with the sales process.   Measuring key actions help measure the success as well as help you optimize.  Measuring actions such as a signup to RSS feed, newsletter, contact info form.   Assign a conversion value to areas that have a strong correlation to a sale.

Mistake #3: Assessing the Success of Search Marketing Using Solely a Direct Marketing Model

Many CMO’s and execs see the bottom line solely tied to the direct sale.  However, much of marketing helps or assists with maturing a user to the final sale of your product.

Yahoo & Comscore = 92% of of online traffic converted offline (on phone and in store)

Mistake #4: Treating SEO as a Project and Not an Ongoing Process

SEO is not “Set it and forget it”.  SEO is not a one time project.

One agency that tracked customers that went on their own with a “Set it and forget it” strategy, ended up losing 1/3 of page 1 ranking in 6 months.  Due to changes in algorithms, competitors, internal website changes, etc. It takes 1 year to make up for the 1 year you skip and then you are still 1 year behind the competitors.

SEO needs to be an ongoing process

Mistake #5:   Making a #1 Ranking as Your Most Important Objective, When It May Be Costing You Business

• You don’t always have to rank #1
• Ranking 3-5, or first page, in many instances will help attain your ROI
• Your desire for position 1 may cost you your ROI
• You have a finite amount of resources, so you need to allocate that time wisely

Mistake #6:  Focusing on “Big” Keywords and Forgetting the Long Tail

“Big” one keyword phrases like Car is more expensive than 2 or 3 word phrase keywords

Long Tail keywords are less expensive, convert better, capture customers further in the buying process, makes it easier for customers to find your product.

Buy Car  or  Car Loan vs. just the keyword Car

Last year 28% of keywords never been searched before
Learn now while the new words are less exp ($0.50 vs. $11 a click)

Mistake #7: Engaging in Paid or Natural SEM but Not BOTH

Having combined natural/organic search and paid search has a multiplier effect and synergistic effect  1+1 = 3.   Customers seeing you in both areas increase credibility in your brand.

Paid search also helps in help with test new keywords for meta tags and content with SEO

Mistake #8: Using Your Langauge, and Not that of Your Customers

You need to understand how your customers are searching versus how your company would want them to search

Fitness String vs. Jump Rope
Financial Advisor Managing Your Assets vs. Asset Manager
Rubbing compound vs. Scratch remover (3M)

Show how people are actually searching

Mistake #9: Optimizing Only Your Web Pages and Not Your Other Digital Assets

Some companies focus only on optimizing the website
You need to optimize Press Releases, Blogs, Social Marketing Areas, Video/YouTube, Reviews, etc.

Mistake #10:  Treating Your Search Marketing and Other Channels Separately, Instead of Integrating Them

Integration is key to have higher results as a total

TV = Create Demand
Search = Capture Demand
67% as a result of offline channel, 39% made a purchase

Ask dept to insert terms that you are targeting into their writing

Ask offline dept what words they are using that you might not be using

Search Insurance =  For TV Ads think about what words people might use to search on

Mistake #11: Failing to Bid on Terms for Which Your Site Ranks Highly Within the Organic Results

Reinforcing several of the earlier points, is that Bidding on terms will help build credibility and synergy within your marketing campaigns.
Test having Paid and Organic dual placements.

Organic Listings is great for Branding
PPC is great for Lead Generation, Direct Reponse Messaging, in addition to Branding (Not always about direct marketing)

52% = using the SE as their first step in the buying decision

Mistake #12: Bidding Solely on Branded Terms and Ignoring Non Branded Terms

Definitely don’t skip PPC for non branded terms, otherwise you are talking to people who already know you if you only bid on branded terms.
Other problems of only bidding on branded terms:  i.e Bidding on Laptop will bring in more customers than bidding on Dell Latitude Laptop harder for a company like HP.

Bonus Mistake:

Attributing Conversions to the Last Click, When There May Have Been Many Clicks

Attribute model, what’s helping you convert through out the customer funnel

Q&A:

How to Find What Keywords Customers are Searching On:

• Website Log File
• Internal Site Search
• Paid Search Data
• Content on Website
• Keywords in Blog Comments

Feeds on people talking about your product on Twitter  (mine public information to be a partner)

Not good example:
Customer Focus Group  (not a good sample size for good keywords)