Getting into the top 10 is only half the battle. How does your search result fare against the other SERP real estate? Here’s some simple tips I’ve gathered to help make your listing stand out.

1. Questions: Try using an intriguing question to spark the interest of the user. Questions leave people hanging, wanting to know more. If you ask the right question, your result will hopefully be clicked. RagePank offers some good thoughts on using questions in your title tag.
2. Keyword Dividers: If your title tag consists of several keywords, consider separating them by something more attention grabbing than commas. I frequently use double colons (::), the vertical bar( | ), or caret symbols ( >> ).
3. Short Titles: If you don’t care about stuffing as many keywords as possible into your title tag, consider shortening your title in order to make it stand out. Short titles are very scan-able
4. Company Name in Tag: The question about whether or not to include your company’s name in the title tag is a topic of much debate. If your brand name is well recognized, you could benefit from the additional trust implicit in the name. If not, you may simply be distracting from more important keywords and wasting valuable real estate.



5. Short URLs: Get Elastic shares some interesting data from Marketing Sherpa that suggests shorter URL’s increase click-through since they do not distract from the more important page title. While there may not be much you can do about the length of your domain (Palmerwebmarketing.com is an unfortunate 18 characters long), you may want to shorten your page files names.
6. Keyword in URL or Page File Names: This tactic is frequently used in Pay Per Click ads. By creating page file names with keywords in them, you make your listing appear more relevant. However, you may want to balance this tactic with the one above by not making unnecessarily long URL’s.
7. Indented Listings: Recently, I posted on creating indented search results. In addition to doubling your SERP real estate, and indented result creates a great visual marker that sets your listing apart.
8. Move higher: This seems like a no-brainer, but often we forget how much more clickable the number 1 spot is over number 2. Moving up a few results can have an exponential effect on your click-through rate.

Not every suggestion here will work for everyone. Be sure to test these tactics on less important pages, and then analyze the results. The key is to stand apart from your competition. If all top positions are using Questions in the title tag, you’re better off doing something else.

So you’ve got your listing in the top 5. Now what? How about doubling your real estate with an indented SERP result?

So what exactly is an indented result? According to Help Center, “When Google finds multiple results from the same website, the most relevant result is listed first, with other relevant pages from that site indented below it.”

So how to you get an indented Google result? Here’s 3 simple steps:

1. Identify 2nd Highest Ranking Page for your Keyphrase: Simply do a Google search for the keyword phrase you are seeking to obtain an indented result for. If you don’t have another page that ranks, or you don’t like the current page that comes up 2nd, create a new one.
2. Link from the 1st Ranking Page to the 2nd Ranking Page: Using your keyword phrase in the anchor text, link from the first page to the second page. Preferrably, use a contextual link within a body of text rather than a sitewide navigational link.
3. Begin Building Links to the 2nd Page: Depending on the competition for this keyword, you may only need a few good quality backlinks to create the indented result.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that indented results can be somewhat fickle. They are frequently here today, and gone tomorrow. However, with proper link building, you should be able to maintain the result.

About Palmer Web Marketing

Palmer Web Marketing offers Ethical SEO consulting and Local Search Engine Placement for small to medium size companies.

Now that Google seems to be artificially adjusting the PageRank of certain sites, we have one more reason to ignore it as a useful SEO key performance indicator. So what should we use to measure the success of our SEO projects? Below, I’ve listed the 7 SEO KPI’s that I track for my sites.

1. Unique keywords: By tracking the number of unique keywords your site is found for, you’ll see a global, birds eye view of how well your site is doing with the long tails. Sure, you want to be found for the important, high volume terms as well, but a healthy site will rank organically for a great diversity of keywords.
2. Organic Visits Per Page: Every page on your site should target a few keywords and draw in traffic for those terms. In other words, what percent of your total unique pages are doing a good job of bringing traffic? If you have 1000 pages, and only 200 unique keyword visits, you’ve got some issues that need to be addressed.
3. Conversion Rate Per Keyword: It’s extremely important to know which keywords outperform others. As a search marketer, your time is very limited. Therefore, you must focus on the terms which return decent ROI.
4. Pages Indexed: The number of pages your site indexed has indexed by Google and Yahoo can give you a rough metric of your site’s crawl-ability. If you find that the number of actual pages you have is much greater than the number of indexed pages, you may have issues with navigation or duplicate content. To view your indexed pages, simply use the “site:” command on Google or Yahoo (e.g. site:www.yoursite.com).



5. Yahoo Backlinks: Unlike Google, Yahoo actually shows you the approximate number of back links pointing to your site by using the link: command.
6. Google Backlinks: Unfortunately, the Google link: command is worthless. In order to see an approximate, although likely outdated count of your external links, login to your Google Webmaster Central account.
7. SERP Rankings for High Volume Keywords: Because web users are becoming more sophisticated and less predictable in their searching habits, I would caution about worrying too much about high volume keywords. However, it’s still important to monitor these keyword positions. SEO software such as WebCEO or WebPositionGold are great timesaver tools.

About Palmer Web Marketing

Justin Palmer is an eCommerce, SEO, and Website Usability consultant that offers Local search consulting services and an SEO Website review for small to medium size e-businesses.

Well, it finally happened. The long awaited Google PageRank updated has sent shockwaves through the SEO community. Despite some of my client’s sites loosing a notch on the over-rated PR scale, I can careless. The results of the SEO campaigns I currently manage have never been better.

In this quick post, I’ll share what SEO tactics have been working for me in the last few months.

1. Focusing on niche keywords first, High volume keywords later
2. Creating multiple landing pages, each focusing on 3-4 keywords
3. I’ve nearly stopped SEO-ing home pages and focused on niche landing pages instead
4. Greatly diversify link anchor text
5. Focusing on Site-wide SEO including url and linking structure
6. Stopped wasting my time with Web directories (I still use blog directories, however)
7. Dropped all Reciprocal Links Pages. (according to Matt Cutts, linking to certain sites can actually decrease PageRank)

I suppose this post didn’t have much to do with the PageRank update. But I think that supports my point that PageRank is a poor SEO metric. 

Recently, Google Webmaster tools started allowing webmasters to disallow certain sitelinks (see picture below) from appear on your search results. While they still don’t allow you to control whether or not these sitelinks show up and for what search queries they are displayed for, it certainly is a step in the right direction.

So what exactly is a Google sitelink? According to Google:

“…Sitelinks are additional links Google sometimes generates from site contents in order to help users navigate your site. Google generates these sitelinks periodically from your site’s contents…”

While it’s certainly a welcome gesture, I would question whether or not it really “helps users navigate your site.” Upon checking the Sitelinks Google created for C28, a Christian clothing retailer that I do work for, I found links for the following pages:

1. The Links page (partners): This is probably the least important page on the site!
2. 2 Broken links to product category pages (for some reason Google decided to remove the parameters from query string that are supposed to follow the question mark (e.g. productlistings.asp?category1=guys&category2=shirts)
3. Link to the “Kids” clothing category: This is one of the least important product categories with virtually no outbound links pointing to it.
4. Locations Page: Good job Google, this truly is an important page
5. Events Page: Important page
6. About Us Page: Important page

Overall, 3 of the 8 sitelinks were pages that I myself would have included if I had the option.

So what’s the moral of this post? If you have sitelinks for your listing (I’ve noticed they only tend to show up when searching for the company or brand name) make sure they are relevant and work properly. If they don’t, login to Google Webmaster central and exclude them. However, as I write this, I have yet to see the pages I requested be excluded actually removed, and I put in the request 24 hours ago.

Now that everyone and their mother has a website and thinks they know SEO, odds are the number of websites competing for your keywords has increased drastically. Within any business, it’s vital to keep track of what your competitors are doing. This practice is even more important when it comes to SEO. In this post, I’ll share some steps to keep tabs on what your competitors are doing so you’ll remain on top.

1. Identify Your Competitors: Obviously, the easiest way to find your competitors would just be to Google your keywords. Another good way would be Alexa Traffic tool and look at the related sites.
2. Setup Google Keyword Alerts: A great way to monitor your competitors as well as your industry in general is to setup Google Alerts for each of your primary keywords. Every time Google finds a blog post, press release, or article featuring your keywords, you’ll get an email with a link to it. Many times, Google alerts have alerted me to the fact that a competitor was using a less than ethical SEO tactic, such as splogging.
3. Setup Google Company Name Alerts: In addition, setup a Google alert for each of your competitor’s names.
4. Check Your Competitor’s Back links: By using the “link:www.yourcompetitorurl.com” command in Google or Yahoo, you can see where your competitor’s back links are coming from. This is a good way of generating ideas for link building.
5. Check Your Competitor’s On-Site Tactics: What keywords are your competitors targeting on their landing pages? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve discovered keywords on a competing website that I’d never considered.

About

Palmer Web Marketing specializes in helping small businesses achieve their online goals with local Search engine placement, email marketing, and eCommerce web usability consulting. To start your company along the path of internet profits, contact us today.

I know what you’re thinking. The rel=”nofollow” tag is only used when you link to external websites right? According to Wikipedia, the no follow tag is “ a relation tag (rel=”nofollow”) which can be added to any link and is technically a request from the website to search engines to ignore the link.” Basically, it stops the flow of the link juice, not passing any page rank.

Why would you want to use this on your site? Well, consider a typical e-commerce site. You’ve got your important pages like top level product categories, and lower level product detail pages. However, the navigation for most sites also includes links to “less important” pages such as your customer service page, return policy, and privacy policy. While these pages are technically still “important”, you don’t necessarily want them to receive the same link juice a category or product page receives, because they are rarely updated.

It’s important to keep in mind that although the Googlebot has the ability to crawl as deep as possible, it rarely will go 5, 6 or 7 levels deep. If it does, it’s a rare occasion and those pages likely don’t rank well.

What’s the solution? Slap the rel=”nofollow” tag on all links in your site navigation that don’t need to be crawled as frequently. If you do this, be sure to link somewhere to them without the nofollow, such as from your physical sitemap.

I believe this stategy can work wonders on getting your site’s pages out of the supplemental index. Be sure to leave a comment if you’ve successfully used this method before, or let me know your results after using it.

If left to itself, pay per click ROI tends to go down the drain. Why? Competition thickens, bid prices skyrocket, and click fraud runs rampant. So what can you do to stop the bleeding? Below are some advanced Pay per clicks tips to give your campaign a much needed boost.

1. Include Keywords in the Display URL: For example, if you were targeting the keywords “seo tips”, create a display url of www.yoursite.com/SEO-Tips. Google, Yahoo, and Live search all allow you to create a display url that differs from the destination one. By using the exact keywords the user types in, you’ll embolden the keyword in the ad, thereby creating an enticing eye magnet.
2. Separate Out Your Keywords: Don’t group dissimilar keywords together under one ad group. When you do this, it makes it harder to tell which keywords are performing best. Separate them out as much as feasibly possible, then adjust your bids accordingly.
3. Watch Your Positions: If you rank in the top 3 organic positions for a keyword, you’re probably better off bidding for the 4 or 5 spot with PPC. This is much easier with Adwords then it is with Yahoo or Live search because Google allows you to bid for a certain position. It’s not always perfectly accurate, but it’s better than nothing.
4. Test different Ad Styles: You’ll never know which writing style will trigger the most clicks unless you test them. Pit an informative style versus intriguing ad copy, or soft sell versus a hard sell. Give them some time, then analyze the results. Don’t simply look at which one received the most clicks. Most likely, you’re better off basing your decision on which converted the best.
5. Follow through with your Landing Pages: Always display the same keyword on the landing page that the user typed in. Think about it. Why did the user click on your ad? Because it contained their keywords! Ensure that they stay on your site by following through with a consistent message.

For more PPC advice, checkout these 25 Pay per click tips.

The success of an SEO campaign is dependant on many factors, but it all begins with keyword research. Targeting the right keywords, and you’ll both rank well and convert your traffic. Target the wrong words, and you’ll either rank for keywords that don’t convert or not rank at all.

I’d like to suggest that the secret to picking the right keywords is finding niche terms that are not too hard to rank for, but will convert well. Time and time again I’ve seen new websites pick terms that are to hard to rank for in a relatively short time. By shooting for the stars, these sites end up missing the mark entirely, and not ranking for anything.

In my opinion, SEOs should always target the more attainable niche keywords first. For example, I’ve been working with a company that is seeking to obtain first page ranking for the term “Christian Music“. However, with Google showing an estimated 85 million results for this query, the odds of ranking in the top ten anytime soon was not promising. With this in mind, we chose to target the keywords “Christian music cds”, “new Christian music”, and “Christian music store” instead. Not only were these keywords easier to rank for, they are more specific and targeted towards my client’s business. Because we chose niche keywords with the term “Christian music” within it, we ended up slowly gaining ground on that term as well.

The moral of this post…. target niche keywords first, and the generic ones will follow. Happy SEOing…

About Palmer Web Marketing

Palmer Web Marketing offers Christian SEO services and SEO Services in Orange County.

Update: Google no longer labels results with “Supplemental Result”. Nevertheless, the penalties still exist. 

“Supplemental Result” – the term no business wants to see next to their website on the search page. Unfortunately though, billions of sites reside in Google’s purgatory, doomed to receive only minimal traffic. Why does the supplemental index exist? How can a website get out of it? The following post will suggest 4 ways to get out of Google’s supplemental results.

Get Rid of Duplicate Content

90% of the time, a website is in the supplemental index because it contains content (usually text), that exists on many other websites. A few examples of this would be manufacturer product descriptions or syndicated content such as news or articles. How do you fix this? Simple, re-write content and make it original to your website.

How do you know if your content is duplicate? Try this duplicate content checker:

Cleanup Nasty, Complicated URLs

Many websites, especially sites that rely on database content, use query strings in the URLs. For example, http://www.url.com/ID=XXX&SOURCE=YYYY. Unfortunately, many search engine spiders don’t like crawling these pages. One reason is that engines consider each url as a unique page, even if it has the same content. So although the page http://www.url.com/ and http://www.url.com/id=123 may have the exact same content, you may incur a duplicate content penalty.

What’s the solution for this? Try to minimize using parameters if possible. While using them for external campaign tracking may be alright, definitely avoid them in the internal linking structure.

Many websites now are re-writing their ugly URL’s with re-writing software. This also has search engine optimization benefits as well. Software such as this is available for both Apache and Windows servers. For more info, checkout this Wikipedia article.

Build Deep Links

While links to the homepage are nice, targeted links to product detail pages within your site will ensure that pages don’t get orphaned and ignored by the spiders. If the crawler always starts at your homepage, it’s likely it will abandon the session before crawling your whole site. Deep linking to content gives spiders a new starting point to find fresh and relevant pages.