Get Ready for Search Engines

Understand the ins and outs of search engines

Let's face it - creating a website for your business is a lot easier than getting it to rank well in search results. And good rankings are what you need to get more visitors to your site.
To get your site into search results, you need to make sure that search engines can "see" your site, and that they regard it as ready for human visitors. Search engines are eager to discover and index new - and newly expanded or redesigned - websites, but there's a caveat: sometimes new web pages are ready and useful, and sometimes they're still under construction or in transition. Web pages that aren't quite done yet wouldn't be helpful to people who find them in search results, so search engines try to avoid including them.
Below you'll find a list of mistakes that can indicate to search engines that your site isn't ready (even if YOU think it is!), and that are, unfortunately, easy to make. We'll show you how to avoid or fix these problems so you don't hurt your rankings in search results.

1. Slow load time for your web pages

Matt Cutts, head of the webspam team at Google, announced in 2010 that page load time - also called site speed - was now one of the factors affecting a site's ranking in Google's search results.
Luckily there's a great Firefox plug-in called YSlow that can help you identify and fix problems with your page load times. For more tools and ways to improve your site's page load time, read 6 Easy Ways to Improve Your Site Speed.

2. Sitemap problems

"We have a quality threshold on our sitemaps. When you build a site map for us, we want it to be clean. When you put a URL into our site map, what I don't want to see in there is any URL that's a 404, 302, 301, anything at all. I want the end state URL only."
”
—March 2011 interview with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and Duane Forrestor from Bing
It's very common for webmasters to create a sitemap, submit it, and then forget about it. Months later, pages have been renamed, deleted, new pages have been added - and your sitemap no longer accurately reflects what's on your website.
Don't include in your sitemap:
Any pages that return a 404 error
A page that immediately redirects to another page via a 301 redirect
Pages that search engines can find when they crawl your site, but that aren't included in your sitemap
If a search engine sees many pages with the characteristics listed above, it makes your sitemap appear to be out of date, and perhaps not trustworthy. Use a tool like Xenu Link Sleuth to crawl your site and generate your XML sitemap file for you.

3. Broken links on your site

Use Xenu Link Sleuth to crawl your website the same way search engine robots do. It will report any broken internal links - that is, links between pages of your site that don't work. Broken links tell search engines your site isn't well maintained, and isn't of good quality. Furthermore, search engines discover web pages by following links from other web pages. If search engine robots find too many broken links on your site, they'll just stop crawling it and go somewhere else.
Remember, you might not even see some of the 404 errors on your website. For example, a missing image file will generate a 404 error, and you may not even realize it. Xenu will catch these errors for you, so you can do something about them.

4. Broken pages that return a 500 error

It's the website equivalent to a Windows application crashing, and it's definitely a bad experience for a human visitor. A 500 error also sends a negative signal to the search engines.

5. Not canonicalizing your subdomains

Make sure that your website can be reached whether or not people type "www." before your domain name. I've seen a number of sites that return nothing at all for the non-www version. People should get the exact same website whether they type www or not. Additionally, you should choose which is your preferred version - called the canonical URL for your site - and use a 301 redirect from the non-canonical to the canonical version. For more information, read Multiple Subdomains: Classic SEO Mistake.

6. The anti-social website

With the sharp increase in social network activity, search engines now look to links and mentions in social networks to help them decide which web pages are important to people. Social signals are now an important part of search engines' ranking algorithms. This means you really need to make sure people share your site on Facebook and tweet about it in Twitter. If no one at all is mentioning your site in either of those places, you're not getting the visibility boost that others - perhaps your competitors - are getting.

7. The site coma

Has anything changed on your website over the past three months? Six months? The past year? The search engines are well aware of whether you've got new pages or updated content - or not. Just watch what happens to your crawl frequency in Google Webmaster Tools if you don't stir things up now and then!
A simple solution to this problem - and to No. 6 as well - is to add a blog to your site, and then publish snippets from your blog on your company Facebook page. You can use the Facebook app RSS Graffiti to automatically publish blog snippets.
Think it might be too hard to generate fresh blog content on a regular basis? Think again. It's not necessary for YOU to have news, new products, or new services to talk about. You can just blog about industry news items you discover, writing a couple of sentences of synopsis and linking out to articles that cover the news in more depth. Not only will you be generating new content, you'll probably make some new friends around the Web who will appreciate your links. They may even take the time to find something interesting on your site and link to it.

8. Not paying attention

You can find great webmaster tools at both Google and Bing that will help you understand what these search engines "see" in your website, and how to improve your site and its ranking in search results. I've solved many problems for clients and gotten them back in the search results very quickly simply by resubmitting their sitemaps via Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Bing Webmaster Tools after fixing their site problems.

To Get Email Addresses

Do it right and win new business

Email is an incredible marketing tool. With its widespread reach and potential for people to forward it on, email gives your business a way to connect with prospects and increase traffic to your website that no other marketing medium can offer.
Without a list of valid email addresses to send messages to, though, it’s hard to use email to market your products or services. It can be tempting to turn to shady ways of acquiring email addresses - including buying email lists - that can land you in email purgatory.
Fortunately, there are also lots of easy, legitimate ways to collect email addresses so you can reap the benefits of a well designed email marketing campaign. Here are some of the basics.

Simply Ask!

When a customer buys something at your physical store, make sure your staff ask if she'd like to sign up for your newsletter while she's paying. Keep a signup sheet close to the register, in plain sight, so people browsing your store can sign up even if they don’t make a purchase.
When you speak with clients on the phone, tell them about all the great information in your newsletter. Talking enthusiastically about your content will make your expertise clear, and will encourage people to give you their email addresses.
It takes just a few seconds to jot down an email address. If you make the ask five times a day for one work week, that’s 25 email addresses you didn’t have before you started, and 100 email addresses in just one month!

Put an Email Signup Form on Your Website
If you’re in a situation where you can’t write down an email address, direct people to your website. Make sure you have an email form on every page so anyone who happens to land on your site can sign up quickly and painlessly.

The signup process should be blatantly obvious, and tell people what to expect from your emails - both content and frequency. That way, they won't fear being spammed with something they don't want or need.
Using a web form template can give your signup form a professional, polished look that complements your website design. There are some free form templates available on the Web. The email marketing firm I work for offers a web form service for those who want convenience or are less technically inclined.
You should seriously consider using a popup form to collect addresses. While they’re not for everyone, popups and popovers have come a long way, and aren't as annoying and intrusive as they used to be. You now have a lot of control over their frequency and appearance, and you can even test different types of popups to see which ones work best for you.

Add Your Logo to Your Video

Make sure they know it's your video!
I have been making a lot of videos lately for my new interview site, FounderBuzz, and thought it would be useful to share something it took me time to figure out: how to add your logo to your video. Of course, this is probably simple for people who have done a lot of video editing, but for a complete novice like me, it was surprisingly hard to find good information.
Lots of people are posting video clips on the Web now. It's often easier to explain a product or service in a video, and there's also the chance that your clever video will become immensely popular and draw more people to your website. With that in mind, you certainly want to embed your logo in any video clips you post online.
I used Apple's iMovie video editing software, so some of the instructions below will be specific to that program. Generally, though, these instructions should help even if you're using other video editing software.

Video Editing Process

Step 1: Generate a PNG of your logo. Get your logo into the proper format. You need a PNG of your logo, not a JPEG, PDF, or other format. You need a PNG because it will show just your logo - the background will be transparent, blocking less of your video image.

Step 2: Create the logo in the proper aspect ratio. Your logo needs to have the same aspect ratio as your video. This will prevent your logo from being cropped or having black bands appear when the whole logo is shown. I have two versions of my logo: one for widescreen HD video (1,280 x 720) and one in standard (640 x 480) ratio.

Step 3: Drag your logo onto your iMovie project. When you do this, you will be presented with options for how to insert this image into your video. Choose Picture in Picture to have it overlaid on the video.

Step 4: Fit your image to the video. Select your new Picture in Picture image in iMovie and edit it. (In iMovie you can just press “c” once you have it selected.) Once in editing mode, choose “fit” to make sure your entire logo is selected.

Step 5: Resize your logo and position it. Dragging the corner of your newly inserted logo allows you to make it bigger or smaller within your video. Then you can position it appropriately within the frame.

Step 6: Expand your logo across your video. I choose to have my logo show up from the beginning of the video to the end, but you can choose to have it show up only in certain sections of the video.

SEO Benefits of Blogging

Give them a reason to come back

Adding a blog to your website is a big decision, but it is something that every company should consider. A regularly updated blog can give people a reason to visit your website more often, and there are also SEO (search engine optimization) benefits to keeping a company blog.
Perhaps you’ve thought about starting a blog for your company, but you’re not sure it will be worth the extra work. Here’s a rundown of the SEO benefits to help you decide.

More Content for Search Engines

Most websites have a fairly limited number of pages, and a limited number of words per page. Adding a blog means you can regularly create rich content, and include the keywords you’re trying to rank well for in search results. You’ll be giving search engines more pages and content to crawl on your site, and more opportunity to see your important keywords.
For every blog post you write, you are giving yourself the opportunity to add content containing five to 10 new keywords. Some of these keywords could actually be longer phrases containing keywords you’re already trying to rank well for in search results.
These longer phrases – called “long tail keywords” by SEO professionals – can be easier for you to rank well for. That’s because as a keyword phrase gets longer, there are fewer instances of it in search engine indexes. In effect, there’s less competition for top rankings in results for searches on those keywords.
For example, a gardening supplies website could add a blog that offers gardening advice. Perhaps the company wants to increase its online sales of bulbs. Of course, the website will have pages selling spring bulbs, autumn bulbs and summer bulbs. The blog could also have articles about spring bulb planting mixtures; bulb planting tools; autumn bulb soil amendments; summer bulbs for shade; and many, many more topics surrounding the word “bulbs.”
Every one of those phrases around “bulbs” is another keyword phrase. By adding lots of articles that include these phrases, the gardening supplies site would be signaling to Google that it has plenty of information about bulbs. The site’s pages would show up higher in more searches that include the word “bulbs.”
The more pages of your website you can get into the top slots of search engine results, the more potential website visitors you will have.

Updated Content for Search Engines – and People

Search engines don’t like it when we allow websites to get out of date. Having a blog encourages people to update their websites more often.
When a new URL is added to your sitemap from a blog entry, search engines have a reason to come back to your website, crawl its pages, and possibly adjust its rankings of your pages. If your content just sits there and is never updated, search engines have no reason to re-crawl your site.
Updating your blog frequently will give people a reason to return often to see what’s new. It also gives them a reason to subscribe to your RSS feed. If you update your blog with information about your new products – or new uses for your products – you could generate more sales.

Link Power

One of the key elements of search engine optimization is links - not just inbound links to your website, but outbound links from your site to others.
When you link to other websites, you show search engines that you are trying to provide a good user experience for anyone who visits your website by sending them to other information sources you’ve judged to be valuable. Because links are how search engines discover new Web pages, you’re also doing those other sites a good turn.
You can link to important pages on your website from your blog. Doing that signals to search engines which pages have information you think your blog readers will find valuable. While this won’t automatically shoot your pages into the No. 1 spot in search results, linking to pages within your own site will help search engines “see” the connections between your pages and their content.

Watch out for Duplicate Content

If there’s one thing you should not do with your blog, it’s duplicating content from another page of your website….or even worse, someone else’s website. Search engines try to avoid returning duplicate content in search results. If your pages are seen as mere duplicates of other web content, that can cause search engines to rank your pages lower than they would otherwise.
There are, however, times when it’s useful for your audience to republish material from another website. That’s called syndication. You should always get permission from the author, and attribute the material to the original source, with a link back to the original article. Pages with content you've syndicated from others may never rank as well as pages where you publish your own original content - but you’re providing a good experience for your visitors. That’s never a bad idea.
To sum up, a blog is a great way for you to keep your website content fresh, boost your rankings in search results, and give people a reason to visit your site frequently. You don’t have to be a slave to your blog, and there’s no law saying it has to be updated daily, or even weekly. Start with once a month, and grow from there.

Video Marketing 101

Keep it short and simple
Video marketing is big. With YouTube now the second most-searched site on the Web, after Google, countless marketers post video clips on YouTube – and other websites – in the hope of winning more website traffic and new business.
While we’ve all seen – and shared – fun or useful marketing video clips, they’re a tiny sliver of what's on the Web. Most marketing videos are boring – so boring that lots of people don't last through the first 30 seconds.
You can make engaging and effective videos, however. Just follow a few simple guidelines, and you’ll hold people’s attention long enough to drive them to your website – or at least, remember your brand the next time they’re looking for what you sell.

1. Keep it short: 90 seconds will do. Research published by VisibleGains, a firm that sells video marketing products, shows that viewer attention drops sharply after 90 seconds. If you can convey your message in fewer than 60 seconds, even better.
For proof that a powerful – and funny - message can be conveyed in 30 seconds or less, watch Wieden + Kennedy’s Old Spice clips.