SES NY 2007 – Search Engine Optimization Workshop Key Takeaways
This is my first Search Engine Strategies conference I've attended, and SES NY '07 promises several new sessions. I attended the Monday training sessions (extra $$$) to brush up on SEM and SEO. Here's my review and key takeaways:
Session 1: Search Engine Optimization Workshop
This session was hosted by Shari Thurow of Grantastic Designs. Prior to this session, I had not heard of Shari before, but she made every effort to point out her knowledge of the subject by mentioning how lawyered up she was over the sharing of content of her new and upcoming SEO book. Aside from being overly opinionated at times and acting like a classic "tech person" does in the face of newbies, her session was very good at driving home this underlying theme: Keep it simple, and don't take any short cuts.
So, what exactly does this mean? Web design is about the end-user, building an experience that is easy to use and to-the-point -- allowing the user to get the information they need quickly.
What to optimize on your site for natural search
Additionally, optimizing your product pages for keywords and phrases is an important component to search engine optimization. Key areas to keep optimized are as follows:
- title tag
- meta description
- breadcrumbs (home > products > my product name)
- Initial h1, h2, h3, etc. tags
- Initial paragraph content
If you look at your web analytics software package, you'll see that the top keywords and phrases that drive search traffic to your site will most often appear in one or more of the above 5 bullets. If you are looking to improve your natural search results with other keywords and/or terms, you'll want to make sure these terms are sprinkled into your copy in the above 5 bullets.
One of Shari's clients, medicinenet.com, trumps WebMD in virtually all natural search for topics relating to medicine (do a keyword search for "medicine" and you'll see medicinenet.com show up #2 -- and no sign of WebMD). She also claimed that medicinenet.com has never done any paid search simply because natural search has been a high priority and has been optimized over several years.
Breadcrumbs serve 2 important purposes
1.) Breadcrumbs are a great visual reference for site visitors to get a sense of where they have landed on your site. Too any web developers and designers leave out this important navigational element because they think it is obvious that the user knows where they are when they navigate a site. This may be true, but what they fail to take into consideration is the fact that many visitors will stumble upon a page within a site (from an external link, search engine, or some other means). This means the user is dumped right into the middle of your site, with no introduction and no immediate understanding to the organization hierarchy of your site. This is where breadcrumbs come into play. Jakob Nielson loves them, too (I thought it was interesting how this article came out a day after Shari's session).
2.) Cross-linking was referred to by Shari as the most under-utilized and incorrectly-implemented component of search engine optimization. Breadcrumbs are an excellent resource for improving natural search. They take up such a small foot print in your site's design, but they can serve a critical role in providing search engine friendly copy very high up in the code of a webpage. Use this area to alternately label sections -- remember, users search in many different ways. For example, we have products called "Premium Hardwood Blinds" but users are searching for "wood blinds." We can put "wood blinds" in the breadcrumbs and leave the page title as the official product name -- or vice versa.
Cross-linking is good. Here's how:
Cross-links are links to other related areas of the site. Cross-linking will help search engines index related content on your site. Link to product pages in more than one place on your site for a good cross-linking strategy. Don't force users to go back to the homepage or products page to get to products. Provide cross-links to other related products and services (like Amazon.com). Search engines loves this and will gobble up your content even more. The takeaway here is that you don't want to dead-end critical pages by not providing related links to other sections on your site.
Archival links are good to have
Press releases, articles, old product information, etc. are all OK to keep on your website. Not only do they help increase the number of indexed pages of your site in search engines, but you can simply cross-link from old/outdated product data/information to the newer information. Nothing is worse than finding search results and linking to a site where they have changed the navigational structure or discontinued a product and show no more information or related links on it. You've just lost that visitor!
Today’s blog-monitoring kudos go to Clickshift
After a recent post about Clickshift being acquired by WebTrends and voicing my concerns, and a previous experience with Omniture monitoring blog posts, I did get a call (voicemail) and e-mail follow-up from Clickshift. Let me go on a slight tangent by saying how much I love how powerful blogs can be and how easily accessible the information is for research and brand protection. I think there's a definite future in this way of servicing new and existing customers and really allows companies to obtain candid feedback from real-world users, and not just people who are so fed up that they call customer service to complain -- and quite frankly, I don't have the time to do this as it's typically easy enough to go to a competitor. Here I am now, championing their efforts and feeling important to them.
I digress. Back to the WebTrends aquisition of Clickshift. Not to worry says Clickshift: same service, just a new logo. So I'm back to looking at their very attractive SEM model again. With 2007 budgets nearing finalization, whichever route I choose can't begin until January, so I have some time to look over it in a little more detail and learn how exactly they will integrate with our site -- and how it can co-exist with Omniture. I realize that technically speaking, the code easily co-exists on each page. It's the data analysis and path-to-conversion process that is going to be somewhat of an overlap.
On one side, I will have Omniture reporting data on non-SEM conversions and then through Clickshift, I will have SEM-based conversions. Not having this data centrally managed requires me to consolidate both sets of data either in a spreadsheet or by some other means. This was the beauty with the Omniture model is that all SEM data and web analytics data could be rolled into a single report. While they haven't exactly made that process painless (and I'm considering going to Omniture University to learn how to get the most out of their application), I take comfort in knowing that it's all there if and when I need it. Time will tell. If Clickshift truely works, then the time savings alone in bid management rules and the day-to-day babysitting of SEM will far outweigh the temporary inconvenience of rolling data from 2 sources into 1 report/spreadsheet.
ClickShift.com aquired by WebTrends
Good news for ClickShift.com, not good news for me (read how I was considering Clickshift). Actually, maybe it's good news. My biggest hangups with turning over SEM optimization from Omniture to ClickShift were:
- Losing control of the Google AdWords account that handled the keyword management for us
- Having to pay up-front for the cost of SEM rather than after the work was performed
- Using yet another vendor and introducing some overlap between Omniture and Clickshift
Now that WebTrends has purchased Clickshift, this may very well eliminate the possibility of using them as a vendor because they will be integrated with WebTrends (a direct competitor to Omniture) and we previously used WebTrends and switched to Omniture (plus, I really, really dislike the WebTrends UI). This purchase also helps explain why I heard nothing from Clickshift after saying I would be able to do business with them after the new year (when we get our new SEM budget). They were so focused on trying to get me to sign a contract that it almost seemed a little pushy and...well, strange. Hopefully being bought by WebTrends eliminates this and it can safely integrate with WebTrends services. Kudos to WebTrends for a very strategic aquisition. This gives them a significant competitive advantage over the other web analytics companies.
This may be a good thing for us in that I can focus on allocating funds towards Omniture's professional search consulting to assist in creating optimized business rules. It still doesn't feature the Clickshift automation and featureset, but maybe through requests and complaining from enough of their customers, they will add it in a future release of SearchCenter. I really hope they do (our corporate discount with Omniture is fantastic). The amount of manual labor that goes into managing each individual business rule in Omniture is significant. Clickshift was really onto something.
On a side note, I did receive the Google digital photo frame gift today. 
Clickshift.com – true keyword optimization?
Today I was given a demo of Clickshift.com's services. They seem to be in startup phase and have a sales force cold-calling around in the industry. I'm not sure how they got my number at the office (they started with the main number, poor sales guys), but eventually were directed to me. Having the entrepreneurial spirit that I do, I'm always willing to check something out that's new and at the very least proprietary (which they claim their service is) or interesting within the first 20 seconds of the cold call. Having done cold-calling myself for SuperMotors, I know what an up-hill battle it is, so I keep an open ear to anyone that happens to catch me at my desk.
The presentation was interesting. I gathered most of what they offered from their site, so the call was a little bit of a regurgitation of what's on their site, but I did get to see a demo of the software. The software application looks very user friendly (major bonus points for me) and easy to get around. These are two very important things when dealing with reporting on search engine marketing simply due to the sheer volume of data that you will collect with a search engine marketing budget over the course of several months. I manage a few hundred keywords at this time but will plan on expanding on this as we invest more money into SEM. Fortunately, I have a baseline for performance based on what I've done so far this year.
UI goes a long ways
While on the "a good UI is good" rant, the simple, straight-forward UI of Clickshift is another reason why it looks interesting. Omniture's SearchCenter is somehwat of a cumbersome application. Omniture, while it has the bells and whistles a marketer needs, lacks the clarity in an intuitive UI. It's the reason why I run Google Analytics and Omniture Analytics in tandem. Google just makes it easy to navigate the basics.
However, there is a limit to what Google can do, thus the requirement for Omniture (more sophisticated tracking capability). I really hope Omniture considers a usability study with its "average user." I'm very technically inclined, but fail to quickly grasp the entire offering of the application due to the many nested layers of navigation, reporting, and custom reporting.
I will admit, they have tutorials availble online and I haven't spent the time to watch through them all. But then again, I didn't have to watch videos for Google Analytics to get it to do what I wanted. It (Google Analytics) just made sense.
More than just bid management
What I like about Clickshift is that it takes into considering landing pages, too, and optimizes your campaigns with different landing pages included in the mix. It manages day-parting, geo-targetting, keyword bidding, landing pages, etc. all in a central location. Currently, I use Omniture SearchCenter and am not pleased with their UI (overly complex) and the fact that you have to anticipate what to do with it. Clickshift is more about self-discovery whereas Omniture's SearchCenter is about maximizing your keywords based on just a single landing page.
I will post more results if I go through with it.
Blog by Eric Long
I'm an experienced online marketer, information architect, digital strategist, and social media enthusiast. I'm passionate about providing outstanding cross-channel experiences for considered purchases (with a focus on mass customization).
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