Testing Isn’t Vital to PPC, But It Can Sure Make You Smile

January 26th, 2011

During the course of evalutions of client PPC accounts today we came across an example which so perfectly illustrates the importance of testing that I just had to share it.

A Little Background

This client had been managing their own PPC campaigns before they came to us. Up to that point, they had spent thousands of dollars with not much to show for it (except, as the client so aptly put it, “a whole lot of learning experience”).

We took over management of this account about 6 months ago. One of the primary tactics we employ with every account we touch is constant split-testing of ads and landing pages. The table below (sanitized to prevent outing the client) shows the ads we split-tested in a certain campaign in reverse-chronological order.

A Picture is Worth…

CTR Increase over time

At the top is the most recent (and active) ad, the ad just below it is the one it beat to become the new champion. That ad beat the one below it, and so on.

At the bottom of the table is the ad the client had written themselves.

The important items to note are the 4-fold increase in click-through-rate, and the relative stability of the conversion rate.

The current top ad shows a 9% conversion rate, but when I grabbed the snapshot the conversion data had not yet updated, so 2 days worth of conversions are absent from this figure. The actual conversion rate of this ad is 11.89%

So What Is This Picture Worth?

This particular client tracks leads as conversions. Our research over the past 2 quarters has shown that a lead is worth about $11.74 in profit after subtracting the COGS and Advertising expense.

As you can see from the table below, if the new ad had been running for the entire 6 months, it would have produced $4,837 in profit (an additonal $3,862).

What if we had stopped at the ad that produced a 3.74% CTR? The client would still have reaped an additional $3,000 (almost).

What if each ad had been running for 6 months?

And this is just one AdGroup, and not even the most-profitable or highest-volume group. This kind of testing goes on in all of their campaigns.

Is Testing Vital?

In some cases, yes. This client still would have made $974 in profit over these 6 months. However, it sure makes it easier to smile when you know you’re doing nearly 4 times better than you would have.

Tags for This Post: conversion data, learning experience, conversions, relative stability, cogs, volume group, conversion rate, whole lot, reverse chronological order

Tags: cogs, conversion data, conversion rate, conversions, learning experience, relative stability, reverse chronological order, thousands of dollars, volume group, whole lot
Posted in The Untouchable Playbook | No Comments »

8 Ways to Improve Your Web Marketing Right Now

October 1st, 2010

Typically when I see a title like this I groan, because I know that the body is going to rehash the tired SEO cliches: check your meta tags, write quality content, put your content in social media… blah blah blah.

Today I’m taking a different tack. Below are 8 cures to the most oft-encountered and frustrating web marketing mistakes we see on a daily basis. Take the time to investigate each point in relation to your website and make sure you’re on top of your web marketing game.

1. Make sure your address works

Almost all web users today will drop the ‘www’ from web addresses when they type them in. In this age there really is no excuse for www.yoursite.com and yoursite.com to not take a visitors to the same page.

Just the other day, however, I discovered a former client whose server is unreachable when you attempt to access their site without the ‘www’. When I brought it to their attention, the response was “Yeah, you have to use the ‘www’.”

This just won’t cut it if I hear about your company at a tradeshow or via some other word of mouth. In fact, even if someone gets a business card with www.yoursite.com on it, they are likely to drop the ‘www’ when they visit your site. And seeing a big “Site not found” error message is destructive to your brand (especially, in this case, for a technology company!).

2. Set up goals in Analytics/AdWords

Analytics Settings - Google Analytics_1285866478525 Let’s assume you’re building a website to be more than just a business card with your phone number on it. Users should be able to take some kind of action directly on your website. Shouldn’t you know how many people are actually taking that action?

Too many times I see Analytics and AdWords accounts set up without any kind of goal or conversion tracking. It is so important to know how different groups of people experience your site, and how many of them actually take the actions you want them to take. Sometimes, it’s the only way to know when a certain web browser has issues displaying your website, as I’ve discovered with several different clients.

If you don’t have anything to track then your website has a larger problem. You need to figure out why you have a website, and what you want visitors to do when they arrive.

3. Point your ‘Home’ link to the right place

Go to your website, click over to a page from your navigation. Now click on ‘Home’ or your website’s logo. What page are you on now? (If you don’t have a ‘Home’ link and your logo does nothing, make that change right away so that someone can navigate back to your main page via one or both options)

Are you currently at ‘www.yoursite.com/’? Or do you have ‘index.php’, ‘default.aspx’ or another page name at the end of your URL? Ask your web designer to modify the code to point the user back to root “/”. Why? Often when someone links to your website it will be after they’ve been to other pages on the site. If they get the link from your site from the home or logo links, they will point to a different page than what most people regard as ‘home’ (e.g. ‘www.yoursite.com/’).

This can also create problems with search engines, who will split the credit of your links between the root of your site and the index page, both of which have the same content, eventually resulting in both pages having reduced authority.

4. Monitor your server

There is no more excuse for shoddy hosting. Rock solid, scalable servers can be had for less than $25 a month, and are more than enough for most websites.

Use this tool from Pingdom (the first site is free!) to monitor the uptime and response time of your webserver. When you get downtime notices inquire about them with your host. If your server responds slowly or is down often, ask around for a hosting recommendation. Odds are you can find something better.

You can also use this tool to find out what your “neighborhood” looks like. See what other websites are on the same server as your website. Are there several thousand other sites? Are there sites featuring adult or illegal content? It might be time to consider moving.

5. Check your load time

Another great tool from Pingdom allows you to check how long it takes individual pages to load. Your homepage and any landing pages you use for promotion through email, PPC, etc. should respond quickly and fully load within 10 seconds (2 seconds if your audience is more tech-savvy).

Try to optimize slow-loading pages by combining Javascript and CSS files using a tool like Minify. You can also talk to your designer about using fewer images, or rearranging the order in which they load so that the content is displayed first.

6. See how your site appears to searchers

Go to Google do some searchers where your website features in the top 10 results (don’t have any? Contact us for some help). Take a deep breath and honestly evaluate the title and description of your site compared with your competitors.

Ask yourself honestly: given the other choices on the page and the information your site provides, would you click on your site as opposed to the others? Why or why not?

Getting ranked highly is only half the battle. You also need a compelling title and description to get visitors to click over to your site. Think about some text that would make your audience click for more information.

7. Tell your visitors what you do

The first big headline on your website should tell your visitors what you do in simple, universal terms. Does your company build software? Then write “We Build Custom Software Applications” not “We Deliver Paradigm Shifts Through Techno-Friendly Tactics” You have 2.5 seconds to grab someone’s attention, don’t make them wade through a string of buzzwords to find out if you’re the right fit for them.

8. Tell your visitors what you want them to do

"Upgrade Your Firefox" It's exactly what Mozilla and I both want. If I told you the number of websites I have seen without a clear call to action on the homepage you would be astounded. If you are building your website with a purpose, then make that purpose clear. Should I submit my contact information for a free estimate? Then tell me to do that. Should I view your pricing sheet? Give me a big fat ‘Download Now’ link.

Tags for This Post: marketing mistakes, meta tags, marketing game, quality content, daily basis

Tags: daily basis, marketing game, marketing mistakes, meta tags, quality content
Posted in Organic Placement (SEO), Strategy, The Untouchable Playbook, Web Basics | No Comments »

Google Doesn’t Know the Difference Between Vegans and Vegetarians

September 7th, 2010

I’ve been carrying around this post for quite a while, waiting to have time to give it the attention it fully deserves. The catalyst for writing it now was an article on the New York Times about how Google wants to become your “answer engine.”

(I can’t seem to find the article that I read now, but it probably doesn’t matter since it’s been a few days and it’s probably behind the paywall now anyway.)

The jist of the article is that Google wants to refine their search to the point that a user can type in their idea of what they want, and Google can anticipate their actual need.

The most simplistic example of this is asking Google to convert between units of measure. Typing “30 dollars to pounds” will get you the current exchange rate. The next step is that when you type just “dollars to pounds” Google can anticipate that you are seeking a conversion rate (even though you didn’t use the keyword “conversion rate”) and give it to you.

You used to have to actually go to a website for this information...

The final step is that they give you the conversion right in the search suggestions, so you don’t even need to finish submitting a query.

You used to have to finish typing in order to get this information.

Google wants to apply this logic to everything they can. Searching for “flight time from … to …”? They can anticipate that you might be looking for a flight and serve you a table of the upcoming flights to purchase.

So what’s the problem? The problem is the 99% rule. Just because something works 99% of the time, doesn’t mean it turns out just fine that other 1% of the time. Google is not infallible.

And my favorite (current) example of this searching for vegan recipes online. I tried out vegan-ism earlier this year for three months. I had to relearn how to cook quite a few things, and searching Google for recipes became a challenge.

In Google’s opinion “vegan” and “vegetarian” are interchangeable words. But while they may be similar, take the search query “vegan lasagna recipe“. There are fundamental differences between a vegan lasagna and a vegetarian lasagna (i.e. cheese and possibly cream).

Vegan = Vegetarian. It does if you're Google and you're scrambling to find relevant results.

But looking at the Google results, it’s pretty clear how Google views this query. Notice how “vegetarian” is bolded in several of the results? That indicates that the results matches your query!

(Something not shown in the image is that 4 out of 5 of the AdWords ads are vegan-only. It seems that Google’s advertisers are doing a better job of segmenting traffic than the search engine itself.)

But a site with a title like “Vegetarian Lasagnas – The Veggie Table – Vegetarian Recipes and Info” has nothing to do with veganism. In this case, the “answer” Google provides is nothing but a waste of time and potentially frustrating, especially when the user has been conditioned to see bolded results as “the answer” to their query.

The real issue is that Google knows that it doesn’t have enough “quality” results for “vegan lasagna” so they are bending the meaning of words to appear more relevant. In this case, a vegan might notice that the recipe calls for cheese before they cook the dish and dig in.

But how long before Google decides that “tesla roadster” is just another word for “lotus elise” and shows me where to put the gas in my car when I search “tesla roadster gas cap” (if you think that example is extreme then you should meet some of the people I know).

Can you tell the difference? If your query doesn't have enough results then Google might not choose to.

What about if Google decides that “Libertarian” means the same as “Republican”? Anyone’s blood boiling yet?

Tags for This Post: dollars to pounds, google, time doesn, current exchange rate, vegan recipes, new york times, conversion rate

Tags: conversion rate, current exchange rate, dollars to pounds, google, new york times, time doesn, vegan recipes
Posted in The Untouchable Playbook | No Comments »

The Simplest Blogging Method

June 1st, 2010

A blog is almost required equipment for a corporate website these days. It grows indexed pages, encourages links, and helps you latch on to new search terms in your industry.

The hard part isn’t getting started, it’s keeping one going. In fact, this post itself is inspired by the fact that this blog has been stagnant for over a month a now.

To help you keep the train on the tracks, I’d like to present a 2-step method to help keep you blogging. Use this whenever you hit the wall. Maybe you’re getting ready to write a massive post, with research and references, but in the interim there is no new life in your blog. Maybe you’re just overwhelmed with the business of doing business and don’t have time to bang out an earth-shattering blog.

Whatever the ~~excuse~~ reason, this should help you get writing again.

Step 1: Get Over It And Hold Some Hands

Remember that the majority of people reading your blog don’t have the same grasp of your industry that you do. Even if they do, they don’t have your unique perspective. They read your blog because even your most basic posts will give them another view on something.

That means that even if you write about the things that you take for granted in your industry, someone out there is going to find them interesting. People come into and leave industries every hour of every day. Don’t believe me?

Go to Google and search: “[your industry] forum”. Take a look at a few posts in the general area and I guarantee you will see a thread that goes something like:

Newbie101 writes:
Hi guys, I’m new here and I’m wondering about [some basic niche topic] and how I can get better at it. Any ideas?

IndustryVet67 writes:
Use the SEARCH button! This has been discussed 1000s of times!

Someone is out there seeking veteran advice on your topic, and all you have to do is put it out there.

Step 2: Find a Hand That Needs Holding

Want to know what the common questions are in your industry or niche? Here’s a shortcut:

Keyword Questions Tool

What is it? This tool keeps a log of search terms beginning with how, what, why, when, and where. You can then search for your keyword and get a list of questions that people are so desperate to have answered that they are literally asking a machine in plain English.

The great thing about questions is that all you have to do to make them an answer is take away the question mark and add a sentence.

For Example…
Let’s say I run a worm farm called “I Got Worms!” My worm-blog has been stagnating recently. I decide to see what questions people have about worms so I go to the tool above and type in “worms“.

Wow! Aside from the questions related to gastronomic and gastro-intestinal topics (my worms are for gardening, not eating) I can see a few gems like:

why do worms come out in the rain?
what animals eats worms?
how to raise worms?

Now, I’m a professional worm farmer, so I will tackle the last one: “How to raise worms?” Watch how this question becomes an answer:

How To Raise Worms In Your Spare Time

Don’t be fooled: raising worms the right way can be a time consuming and expensive process. However, in my 27 years as a professional worm farmer, I’ve picked up 3 tips that will help you raise longer, smarter worms than anyone else on your block!

[Worm Tip 1]
[Worm Tip 2]
[Worm Tip 3]

Now, if this all sounds like a bit too much work, check out our assorted selections of worms for sale.

Any industry expert can come up with 3 tips off the top of their head (just think about what you would tell a neighbor who asked for your expertise on your niche).

In Just 15 Minutes You Have:

Added a relevant post to your blog
Answered a popular question of potential customers or readers and,
Added a keyword-rich link back to your website which will also drive sales.

Not bad for 2-steps, eh?

P.S. I have a feeling this post will eventually rank for something relating to worms and worm farming. I don’t know anything about worms or worm farms. Please seek an expert here.

Tags for This Post: doing business, search terms, search button, industry forum, step 1, excuse, grasp, step 2, niche topic, google

Tags: doing business, excuse, google, grasp, industry forum, niche topic, search button, search terms, step 1, step 2
Posted in The Untouchable Playbook | 1 Comment »

Where Does Misinformation Come From?

November 10th, 2009

I was doing some reading on one of my favorite forums the other day, and a discussion had broken out about Google’s sandbox, whether or not it existed, and what its actual effects might be. I identified three competing theories about the Sandbox-phenomenon, but I only really agreed with one of them.

Beyond just the issue of the sandbox (another post in itself), it got me thinking about where misinformation comes from in the SEO world. How do people end up with such wild information about everything related to SEO?

Telephone Game

One of the most obvious sources of misinformation in any industry is mis-translation, either through laziness, error, or lack of comprehension.

For instance if, in a client meeting, I made the statement: “Your Google PageRank will only change roughly once every three months, and is largely dependent on the rank of other sites linking to you,” someone at the meeting may misunderstand what I said.

Later, they may repeat to someone else that “Where you rank on Google pages only changes once every three months.” Although PageRank and search-ranking are two totally different concepts, someone may now be infected with the misinformation that one has the properties of the other.

Extrapolation of Results

This might be more commonly known as the “knowing enough to be dangerous” effect. Generally, this type of misinformation comes from someone who has done something of little significance, and applies to some greater situation. I believe this to be especially common in the web marketing world because most people keep their exact niches/industries a secret in order to prevent competition.

For example, a web designer in South Dakota designs a web page for a cosmetic surgeon in the local area. He reads a bit about SEO, and so he optimizes the site, maybe gets a few links, and helps the doctor submit his site to Google Local. Voila! Withing a couple weeks of the site being up it ranks for “south dakota plastic surgeon” and bunch of other great terms.

Meanwhile, in San Diego, an SEO firm is feverishly building links for their new, local cosmetic surgery client. Despite getting awesome links from authority sites, perfecting their on-page optimization, and having a rock-solid web server, they can’t seem to get to the top of the page.

The designer and a member of the SEO firm meet on a forum after the desperate SEO posts a question: “We’ve done x, y and z for this local cosmetic surgeon’s site and can’t get it to the top. Can anyone think of something we haven’t?”

The South Dakota designer chimes in, “I just ranked a similar site in my local area for basically the same terms. I’d recommend taking a look at…”

“Thanks,” says the SEO, “we’ve done all that. Any other ideas?”

“You’re probably penalized,” replies the designer. “You should resubmit and look into the different penalties.”

Notice that the two never compared market sizes or competition. There was simply an extrapolation of “well, he did it, we must be doing something wrong.”

I can tell you right now that the market for cosmetic surgeons in San Diego is at least three times as competitive as the one in South Dakota, and probably more like 5-10x. Months later, that same SEO might try to “help” someone else by telling them about the penalty they received.

Compounding/Confounding Variables

I’ve seen this written both ways, and I believe they are equally correct, although they describe different parts of the same phenomenon.

“Compounding” refers to the multiplied affects of two or more variables affecting the outcome in their own way (could be the same, in which case your result is increased, or different, in which case it is sandbagged).

“Confounding” pretty much refers to what happens when you look at the results. In the case where two variables affect the outcome in equal, but opposite directions you would see no result. Totally confounding.

Given the massive number of variables in any SEO situation (from server setup, to domain entries, to site architecture, to content structure, to off-page factors, and search engine algorithm changes) it is easy to assign some outcome to one variable, when it was actually caused by another.

For example, take the case of the PPC manager who writes some new ad copy. She starts with her original ad:

And then writes some new copy:

“Interesting,” she thinks to herself, “that new ad copy makes a very definitive arrow pointing right, I wonder what that will do to click-through rates.”

She has just introduced a compounding variable. Later, when the new ad outperforms her old ad she may attribute the success to the geometric properties. But look at the ad, it’s just better all around.

Isolating those types of variables is difficult, but can be done. Besides, is it more likely that the ad improved because it uses both ‘clients’ and ‘customers’ and has more pleasing flow, or because the copy points to the right? I would say the former, but we could now test for the latter as well.

When receiving advice or information on web marketing, I would urge you to consider the source and parse for any of the above. Too many mistakes are made because the source of information is unreliable.

Tags for This Post: game one, lack of comprehension, cosmetic surgeon, search ranking, telephone game

Tags: cosmetic surgeon, different concepts, game one, google pages, lack of comprehension, search ranking, telephone game
Posted in The Untouchable Playbook | 1 Comment »

How Does UntouchableMarketing WORK?

October 2nd, 2009

Our ultimate goal at UntouchableMarketing is to unleash the power of the internet in fantastic ways. Whether this is leveraging data-mining for lead generation, or simply getting a site to the top of results, it’s all for the goal of impressing business owners with the sheer power of the web.

But we all know that what we do, and how do it are two different things. Every business (even a consultancy) needs to run the day to day: client communications, billing, time tracking, expenses. Since I’ve gotten this question so much lately, I thought I’d give out some endorsements to the software that makes UntouchableMarketing WORK.

Project Management

photo(2) At the heart of any good consulting relationship is accountability, communication and execution: also known as project management.

Basecamp - This 37Signals product is one of the best out there for project management. It allows us to use templates to easily set up most projects within 10 minutes. We can also invite clients to view the milestones, when appropriate, and update the project with messages, notes and files.

Things - Although we love Basecamp, for day to day tasks it doesn’t quite fit the GTD (‘get things done,’ or our preferred acronym ‘GSD’) model. Things does. Beautifully. My only complaint is that the desktop app is currently Mac-only, which means I have to enter each task via the phone keypad. However, this app is definitely worth it, I keep mine in the main app-bar on the iPhone between ‘Mail’ and ‘Messages.’ It’s a great way to stay on-task.

Time Tracking and Billing

The least fun part of UntouchableMarketing.

Freshbooks - The fact that we’ve gotten as many compliments on our billing system as on our actual work should tell you something. Freshbooks is amazing. Not only do they have an iPhone app for time tracking and manipulating invoices, they also have Windows/Mac gadgets/widgets for time tracking on the desktop. The interface is painless.

My only complaint is that you can’t create multiple invoices simultaneously, but billing could certainly be more painful.

PaySimple - We have just signed on with PaySimple this month, but the promise of ACH drafts and automated payments is music to my ears. I have heard nothing but good things about PaySimple’s service, so I will report back once I’ve had some more experience.

Communication

The most vital part of any relationship.

Google Apps for Domains – We’ve been using Google Apps since it was in Alpha and have had few complaints. Administration is easy to accomplish, and Gmail is still one of the best spam-defenders we’ve ever seen. Plus we can share calendars and contacts across the world, and given that our team ranges in location from San Diego to Philly, it’s a good thing.

Pidgin - As more of the “Millenial” generation enters the workplace they’re bringing with them a favorite tool from their high-school and college days. Internet marketing being what it is, we all have AIM, Yahoo, and Google messenger accounts. Pidgin helps manage all of them from one interface.

Miscellaneous

The other stuff that helps us GSD.

MileBug - This handy little iPhone app tracks your mileage, allowing you to export reports via email. For me, this is amazing because I am terrible about mileage logs. This way, I make sure I get my $0.55/mile back from the government every year.

Pandora - Unlimited, portable music for $15 a year? Sign us up. Great internet marketing is the result of music and caffeine.

That concludes the round-up of our favorite tools for getting work done. This framework allows us to concentrate on the really important stuff: traffic and sales.

Tags for This Post: day tasks, billing time, task time, client communications, sheer power, two different things

Tags: billing time, client communications, day tasks, sheer power, task time, two different things
Posted in The Untouchable Playbook | No Comments »

iSnare for the long term?

November 21st, 2006

The Article Distribution Service iSnare.com has been billed as one of the best tools around to increase a website’s presence. And I’ve been a big proponent of it since I first came across the service.

The idea is simple enough: submit an article to this service, it is reviewed by humans for quality and then gets auto-distributed to 1000s of article-aggregation websites, many on general topics, and a few on whatever topic you choose for your article.

After using it a few times, I began to notice that pages I promoted with the service would tend to rise in Google’s SERPs for my targeted terms, and then slowly fall back down. They would usually settle at higher positions than where they started, but I wondered why the Rome effect was so strong (that was a subtle reference to a rise/fall timeline).

So, I decided to study the Google results on fresh articles, and their mentions in search engines. I used the old trick of searching a unique phrase. On August 4th I used a unique phrase from each article on Google’s engine: 0 results. I then submitted both articles to iSnare for distribution. On August 8th I got an email that both articles had been approved and syndicated; a second Google search revealed 0 results for both.

0 results again on Aug. 9th. Then on Aug. 10th I saw the first signs of life: 7 results for Article 1 and 8 results for Article 2. By Aug. 15th, Article 1 had 437 results, and Article 2 had 458 results. There are two points of note here:

Point 1: I submitted both articles under the same category. They were approximately the same length (around 450 words). I submitted them on the same day within minutes of each other, and yet Article 1 lagged behind Article 2 for some reason.

Point 2: At this point (Aug. 15th) there were no supplemental results for either article. All 400+ results were fully viewable in the main index.

On the 16th of August the dupe filter must have kicked in on Article 1, because supplementals appeared and total results dropped to 361. Article 2 continued to thrive with 556 results on the 16th, with still no supplementals showing.

Eventually the dupe filter must’ve kicked in on Article 2 as well, and by August 30th, both result counts were below 50 (39 and 34 for 1 & 2, respectively).

As of today, Big G shows 11 results, of a total of 16 for Article 1 (so, approx. 4 supplementals). Article 2 fared better in the end, today displaying 16 results of 22 total (so, approx. 6 supplementals).

The [recently exported] PageRank for the top 10 results on each article range from 0-2, with the majority being 0 (and 2 N/As!).

So now some theories:

1. Article 1′s target phrase was more competitive than Article 2′s. My theory is that the more competitive an area, the greater number of filters (or in some cases, reviews) a page must pass to become part of the index. This is explained best in the theory of long-tail keywords, where phrases that don’t mean much in a marketing sense have a lot of impact on John Q. Searcher.

2. To compete with social bookmarking, Google needs to be buzz-aware. When a site creates a certain amount of buzz (linking, textual-references, etc.) Google needs to get in there and evaluate it for ranking. It will weight these sites with additional trustrank to get on top of the coming wave. A second (and potentially third) filter will later decide if the page is worth keeping in the index. Possibly by analyzing search volume for a phrase vs. the amount of “buzz”.

What might a takeaway be from this experiment? In my case, the combination of the “buzz” created with the article distro, plus the already-established authority (or Trustrank) of the site was enough to put the [brand new] pages I was targeting into the top 10 for their intended keyphrase.

As with most SEO activities, it is recommended to use this tool appropriately, and in combination with other tools.
Any thoughts?

Update: Looks like Aaron Wall and I may have been thinking along some similar lines. He just posted about new domains getting ranked in Google over old sites, and mentioned the following:

“Also think of the search business model as though you are a search engine. To them, being the first person to do something is a sign of quality because to be the first person in a market requires some market timing / knowledge / investment / luck.”

Tags for This Post: google search, first signs, serps, signs of life, google results, subtle reference

Tags: first signs, google results, google search, serps, signs of life, subtle reference
Posted in Building Momentum, Organic Placement (SEO), The Untouchable Playbook | No Comments »

Are Meta tags still useful for SEO?

November 17th, 2006

I was reading a thread about meta tags on the DigitalPoint forums today.

.NET magazine wrote an article on SEO recently and stated that meta tags no longer matter for search engine optimization. Were they correct to do so?

The SEO industry is in state where most of the mechanical aspects of optimization can be handled by a competent web designer who stays on top of the basics (.htaccess, robots.txt, static URLs), which is why we see so many design firms now touting that they can perform SEO while designing a site.

So that takes care of the ‘search engine’ part of SEO. But what about optimization?

Search engines (specifically Google) still use meta tags, but not to rank your site. At least not directly.

Let’s start with three statements:

Fact 1: Google has access to your meta- title and description tags.

Fact 2: Google will display your title and description tags in search results, unless the engine feels that writing its own description from your text, or using your DMOZ entry is more relevant (algorithmically determined, happens less than 20% of the time in my experience).

Fact 3: Google will rearrange its search results by click through rate and other (measurable) factors to provide he most relevant results to users.

You may wish to debate fact #3, but for now let’s assume it’s true in this world.

The acceptance of these three facts means that you need to write a title and description that will impress visitors and increase your click through rate. A better visitor experience will push your site higher in the rankings.

So how do you write a good title and description? Well, that means it’s time to take a page from the PPC-world…

Tags for This Post: relevant results, description tags, google, mechanical aspects, visitor experience, digitalpoint forums, design firms

Tags: description tags, design firms, digitalpoint forums, google, mechanical aspects, meta tags, relevant results, search engine optimization, visitor experience
Posted in Organic Placement (SEO), The Untouchable Playbook | Comments Off

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