If you counted on Microsoft’s “Live Search” search engine to drive online conversions to your website, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Why?  Microsoft launched Bing, their new search engine a little over a week ago - they’re actually calling it a decision engine, as Aaron covered recently.

The decision factor is certainly something that Microsoft thinks will give them a leg up on Google and Yahoo (more so Google).  Some of the usability features in the new Bing search engine which help the user make a decision are:

• Related keyword search results, along w/ (only) the Top 5 results of the user’s original query.  This doesn’t happen for every query used, but Bing does attempt to “guess” what you’re searching for and expands on the search w/ 3 search results for approx. 5 related queries.
• Bing utilizes AJAX scripting to show a “preview” pane for most search results.

The Bing interface utilizes AJAX scripting to showcase the website previews and was discussed by Scott Grizzle of NeXplore Corporation, a developer of web tools and interactive advertising products:

“Bing is purported to have some pretty interesting features that make search more efficient such as a website preview pane, video preview, and helpful groupings of search-results by category,” said Scott Grizzle, chief marketing officer for NeXplore Corporation. Continue reading in AJAX World Magazine (6/1/09)

Sample screenshot of Bing preview pane (click image to view larger size):

Sample preview pane in Bing search results

Ok, so Bing likes to provide a variety of useful results and a preview… How does that affect you?

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Qualified AdWords Professional

Having recently been required to re-up on our Google AdWords Professional status, I now have a unique perspective of how difficult and “involved” the whole process is.

Before I get into the actual exam tips and feedback, let me give you some background on my previous experience.  I have personally been working with and been invovled in the PPC marketing field for nearly 9 yrs now - going back to Overture, Findwhat and other early pay-per-click marketing systems.  Back then, there were no tests, no certifications to speak of - you either knew how to setup an account and manage it effectively or you didn’t.  Throughout the past 9 yrs, I have had various levels of involvement with our PPC services.  I have had more of a hands-off role, allowing a new PPC manager to take over and manage the accounts on a daily basis; I have had full involvement, to where I am solely responsible for the daily activities and bid management on the accounts; and, I have had the pleasure of training new marketing staff on the intricacies and best practices for managing PPC accounts.  In short, I have extensive experience on all levels of PPC marketing and understand the core concepts well.

Preparing for the Google AdWords Professional Exam

I haven’t studied for a test since college (2000), so planning and setting myself up for the Google AdWords Professional exam was quite the undertaking and learning experience - like learning to ride a bike again if you hadn’t for awhile.

Google provides a great resource and training area on their website to help you prepare for the test.  I found the video tutorials, which was my preference for studying, to be very informative and well thought out.  I would say that they were the proper duration and contained “most” of the information that ended up being on the test.  In total, I believe the videos run somewhere around 8 hours.  Having knowledge of several topics already, I utilized the fast forward button quite frequently during my studying sessions.
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More and more recently, we are seeing SEO clients who are utilizing non-SEO friendly menu systems for the primary navigation on their websites.  While the menu may perform great functions and/or be easy to create through Dreamweaver or some other website editing program, the effects of the menu on their organic search engine traffic could be devastating.  The worst part, is that the business/site owner has no idea that they are limiting their SEO capabilities by using the menu.

So how do you know if your menu is not search engine friendly?

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After several years in our previous office space, MorePro Marketing has relocated to a new office area in Phoenix, AZ on Camelback Rd.  For anyone who has visited us, or wanted to, please update your records to reflect our new Phoenix location below.

MorePro Marketing, Inc.
1951 W. Camelback Rd., Suite 210
Phoenix, AZ 85015

Everything else is still the same, including our email addresses and phone numbers.

Cory

After explaining the concept of PageRank sculpting and nofollow links to a recent client, I realized that the concepts and strategies behind this SEO tactic are not very well known.  I hope that the following explanation of PageRank sculpting and nofollowing links will help you to understand the basics behind this strategy:

Nofollowing to Improve Keyword Rankings

The concept of nofollowing some of your internal links is often referred to as PageRank sculpting.  This is essentially helping improve the PageRank of certain pages through any of the following means:

• Nofollowing duplicate links (e.g. repeated links in different areas).
• Nofollowing non-keyword links (e.g. Contact Us, Home, About Us).
• Nofollowing pages w/ duplicate content or non-SEO friendly pages (e.g. popup image pages, Flash pages, etc.).

If you think of a page as passing 100% link value (as a whole) and let’s say for instance that this page has 10 links on it, each link would have 10% value that it would pass onto the destination URL.  So by using nofollow on duplicates and/or non-keyword links, we are helping increase the % of value that each link continues to pass to the desired pages.  In this same example, if we were to nofollow 5 of the links, then the remaining 5 links would now pass 20% SEO value vs. the original 10%.  When those 5 passing value are optimized and keyword-enriched, the % increase can help improve the rankings for the destination URLs in most cases.

One good example of where/why a nofollow would be used is to help improve the anchor text (link text) for the homepage.  In the case of your site, the links back to the homepage are simply “Home”, versus something like “cheap t-shirt printing”, which would be more optimal.  Having your page rank well for “home” is not ideal, but by optimizing the ALT tag on your logo (ALT tags are like anchor text) to include more relevant keywords and linking to the homepage, we help increase the page’s relevancy for those keywords.  And since the “Home” links carry no value, we choose to nofollow each occurrence.

This description and example just brush the surface of the PageRank sculpting topic and are in no way a complete strategy to improving Search Engine rankings.  Combined with solid web content, a diverse linking strategy and good overall site organization, these techniques can be utilized to help give you an advantage over your competitors.

For more information on this topic or to inquire about MorePro’s SEO services, please contact us.

Cory Howell
SEO Strategist

Arguably one of the most difficult things to create and define for your website, the Value Proposition is also one of the most critical sales-enhancing components you can optimize.  Most websites fail to even include their value proposition in the site’s design and messaging, while others display it poorly and/or haven’t articulated it properly. 

If you’re not sure what a value proposition is, let us help you to understand it.  One of our earlier blog posts covers the Importance of Value Propositions and should help you get up to speed so you can begin working on your own value statement(s).

I recently participated in a Marketing Experiments webinar in which they went through specific ways to analyze your current value proposition and to get the most out of it that you can.  The details of that webinar can be found here.

In addition to the basic evaluations of analyzing value propositions, the team at Marketing Experiments has created a table/chart to help you determine if your value proposition is up to par.  The two key factors in the table are Exclusivity and Desire, two elements that your visitors will be thinking about when deciding whether or not to buy from you. 

Ideally, a good value proposition should be highly exclusive, meaning you’re one of the only companies in your industry offering the “value”.  There also has to be a high desire for that value, otherwise your the benefits will not be recognized.

In regards to creating and communicating your value to customers, the following ideas are suggested:

• Clearly differentiate your product/service from your competitor.
• Make sure that you’re competitive or on equal footing w/ your competitors on other levels of value.
• Stand-out from the competition w/ at least one unique value.
• Develop a value statement for your company, as well as your product/service; they are two different elements.

The details of the webinar will certainly help you to review your own website, but ultimately you will not know which value statement works best for your audience until you test it.  PPC ads and/or A/B testing are great methods to complete the testing of your value propositions.

Once you have developed your value proposition, test out different ways to communicate it to your customers.  It is one thing to have a value, but it is quite another to effectively communicate it.  Test, test, test…

In reviewing some keywords today in Google, we stumbled upon a highly questionable website showing up in the #1 position for “business insurance“.  We check this keyword on a pretty regular basis and have slowly seen the following site creeping up over the past 2 months, but a #1 ranking is ridiculous - especially after we detail this website’s past.

You can view the results of the query for “business insurance” here or you can just check it yourself (And no, I won’t link to the site).

At the time of this writing, thecagetattoostudio.com was ranking #1 in Google for the keyword “business insurance”.  The domain has nothing to do with business or insurance as you can obviously see.

The results immediately puzzled us, especially considering that there are close to 10 million results for the keyword and it is in a highly competitive industry.  Of course, we had a few ideas in regards to how they were able to accomplish this and several of them were verified.

So how did they get this high profile ranking… let us take a look at some of the things we know:

• The domain had expired earlier this year and was purchased by an unknown owner.
  • The domain was actually used for a tattoo shop website until it expired.  The original site can still be viewed at archive.org.
• The domain has over 3,000 links reported from Yahoo Site Explorer.
  • An aggressive & questionable linking campaign was initiated almost immediately after purchase, including a lot of paid links.
  • Most of the incoming links appear to be from Russian (.ru extension domains) and appear to be of the paid variety.  The sites are entirely in Russian aside from the select few “paid links” in the sidebars.  The link to thecagetattoostudio.com are in English and utilize one of their primary keyword targets.
• The domain is also hosted on a server with 2 other domains that are similar - the topic of the website does not match with the domain name.
• The site is nothing more than an affiliate site to generate insurance leads for another site.
• The site is only made up of 2 “business insurance” related pages.  All others showing up in a “site:” search are leftover from the tattoo shop’s site.

It would appear from the outside that this is clearly a spamming attempt at Google, but you wonder if they know about it and/or if they can do anything.

So in summary, a 2-page, 3-month old, tattoo-based domain w/ a high percentage of paid links from Russian websites is ranked #1 for a super-competitive keyword in Google’s search results. 

Has anyone seen a similar situation as this?

One of the easiest automated methods of acquiring links these days is using software to auto-fill comments on related blogs, forums, Pligg sites, etc. (Note: MorePro does not use automated methods of building links; we build all links manually).  There are many blog commenting tools to choose from, including Comment Kahuna, which has a pretty simple interface and good reporting tools.  Kahuna is not an auto-filling blog comment tool, but it does walk you through each blog step-by-step as you attempt to build incoming links to your website.

The problems that occur, of course, are that most of the blogs that get identified are using “nofollow” tags in their commenting systems.  To some, including the creator of the Kahuna program, links are valuable regardless of where they are placed or if the nofollow tag is being used.  While I have some belief that this is accurate, I don’t feel that submitting to nofollowed blogs is a good use of time & resources.  I believe that all references to a domain, nofollowed or not, can help to build the authority of that website (or author) and that at some point, the authority may help factor into the site’s rankings.  But in the interest of client’s money and the work that we complete, our intentions are always to target high-quality, relevant links.

The argument also exists that commenting on blogs with the nofollow tags enabled will help drive additional traffic to your website (via browsing readers).  While not completely far fetched, the amount of traffic you could get from something like this is minimal at best.

Ultimately, the process of acquiring good blog links (comments or other) boils down to participation and community involvement.  If you add value to an existing conversation and slowly build yourself up as a contributor, it becomes more likely that links you include in your comments and/or relationships you build with the blog owner will develop into something tangible.

Cory Howell
SEO Strategist

Press Release History

For over 100 years, the common press release has been used by public relations companies and professionals to promote the companies they represent.  The typical press release can focus on a new product announcement, the hiring or promotion of an influential executive or can be used to act as a “tarp” to cover the fall-out from bad press.  Historically, the first press release ever, was submitted to help shield the Pennsylvania Railroad after a horrible accident.  The release was delivered before the news media could react and create their own versions of what might have happened. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_release)
 
Using traditional methods of distribution, a press release’s target audience is the media itself - those influential writers and news media outlets that would be capable of turning a “nobody” into an overnight sensation.  By targeting national newspapers, magazines and media outlets, a company or individual would have a much better chance of getting the story distributed the way they wanted to (versus the media’s interpretation).
 
Press releases are typically written by the company which the release is promoting (or who the story is about).  A lot of critics have argued that this one-way point of view is misleading and contradictory to the types of honest stories that the media would report through research and interviews (Ya right, huh?).
 
Moving forward to the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the Internet has played an ever increasing role in the purpose and method, with which press releases have been utilized.  A new generation of “optimized press releases” has emerged, much of it due to the high-demand of SEO companies and fledgling online businesses looking for an edge.

Sample Press Release Summaries

Optimized Press Releases

So what exactly does an optimized press release look like?   Before we jump to that, we must first define “optimization” for those not familiar with the art of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  It’s basically building up a theme and authority for a given website, with the sole intention of improving that site’s search engine rankings (results from a search query).  This is done using a variety of methods, including using the keywords on the website, building incoming links to the website and others.

An optimized press release takes the idea of SEO to another level.  During a time when most webmasters focused on optimizing the content on their own site, the first originators of the optimized press release had one goal in mind - to increase the number of “one-way” links to the website of the release’s focus.
 
By optimizing a press release for the keywords and phrases that your website is targeting, and then submitting it for global online distribution, one can quickly build up the number of incoming links (backlinks) to their website.  Of course, the more backlinks you have, the better you should rank for the keywords that you’ve targeted.

Backlinks from Press Releases

A lot of companies that submit press releases for online distribution fail to take advantage of the optimization opportunities that are available.  I could show you hundreds of press releases that are submitted each day without any hint of optimization -How much money are they spending for virtually no benefits to their online business (& revenue)?
 
The key to optimizing press releases for distribution is the use of “anchor text links” within the body of the press release.  Anchor text is the keyword or phrase that is linked to another page or website; anchor text is typically identified by the blue font and underline.  It’s possible to submit press releases with your URL in them, but if you’re not using the anchor text, you’re wasting your money.  By implementing the anchor text links, you’ll get a free link from every site that picks up your release.

Sample Press Release Distribution Stats

That begs the question; how does a press release get picked up online?  The answer: RSS Feeds… These are the keys to distributing an optimized press release quickly and effectively online.  You choose the optimized RSS feed categories and topics that your release is about, and once approved, your release gets distributed via RSS/XML to hundreds, sometimes thousands of other relevant websites who’ve chosen to display those category news items.  Not only do you get the backlinks from the press release distributor, but you also get links from the sites that pick-up your release and distribute it on their website.  In some industries, this could be thousands of websites - and it all happens very, very quickly.

Summary

Submitting optimized press releases is good for your SEO campaign and general search engine marketing strategy.  Knowing what to submit, and how to submit it, is the key to your success. 

For more information on how MorePro can help you achieve higher search engine rankings through press release distribution, please click here or call (866) 249-2432.

Cory Howell
SEO Strategist
 

In a recent survey of our own SEO clients, MorePro has discovered that many business owners and marketing directors are not paying full attention to the ROI of their online spending. While Search Engine Optimization is online component of a company’s online marketing program, it’s one of the most critical to the bottom-line. Natural, organic traffic gets cheaper each time a new visitor comes to your site - PPC continues to be costly throughout your campaign, unless you simply turn it off.

Here are some interesting results from our survey:

• Approximately 36% of the individuals we surveyed, said they look at their SEO ranking reports “infrequently” (less than once a month).

Ok, so we’re sending the SEO results to our clients so they can keep tabs on the program’s success… that’s good right? But 36% aren’t even looking at them - ouch!

• 33% of respondents said they’re “Not sure” what affect incoming links have on their SEO campaign.
• 25% said they’re not sure what affect Social Media Marketing has on their SEO campaign.
• Almost 49% of respondents said they did not implement the SEO recommendations provided, or only installed some of them.

The last bullet item has always been a difficulty…
How do you convey the importance and urgency of SEO recommendations to a client? Besides using common SEO best-practices and providing resources confirming the recommendations are in fact legitimate, how do you ensure that the changes get made?

Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to enforce the completion of SEO changes due to numerous circumstances, including: additional unforseen costs, amount of effort to complete, adequate staffing or time, failure to believe recommendations are valid, site limitations (coding, structure, etc.) and many other excuses. For sites that have implemented the recommendations, we see great improvements - so why can’t everyone do it?
What we take from the results of this survey, is that most businesses don’t fully understand the following:

1. What SEO actually is and involves.
2. Common terminology & methods of SEO.
3. How to evaluate the success of an SEO campaign.

By sharing this information, our intention is not to point fingers at these businesses or to say their aren’t smart; we’re simply showing how companies interact with SEO firms, including ours. I’m sure this applies to other SEO companies as well - it’s just as important to teach & inform your clients about our industry, as it is to do the work itself.

We need to do a better job of teaching our clients about SEO best-practices and keeping them updated on the strategies & techniques that are required to continue improving their SEO rankings and traffic. Afterall, if the client doesn’t know what’s going on with their SEO campaign - how are they going to see the “value” in it?

Cory Howell
SEO Strategist