Search Strategies in 2010

Three new articles out this week each underscore the evolution (and importance of) search as we go into 2010. Each article I felt raised some interesting issues pertaining to how an organization should consider constructing their search strategies in driving traffic to their websites.

At HubSpot they took a survey of existing clients to find that of the three primary methods to drive search traffic (organic, paid, referral sites), organic drives more traffic than both paid and referral combined. Considering the added credibility (and increased conversion) of organic search vs paid, how much of your search budget is devoted to SEO vs strictly paid?

On the Google Blog, they provided a very brief summary of some stats from 2009 -- all are interesting factoids, but one especially stood out for me w/respect to driving traffic:
Number of search quality improvements made by Google in 2009: 540, ~1.5 each day

What this tells me is the importance of having a dynamic SEO strategy, and not just staying pat w/the hand you have. It's a daily fight to stay abreast of Google's changing algorithm's, keeping your keywords in the top echelon and beating your competitors to the punch to get the best terms and results.

In ClickZ's 2010 online marketing trends for 2010 the article mentions the increased use (and increased competitiveness) of broad key terms that are used earlier in the purchase process due to their limited supply. It's critical that you identify (and make ROI-based decisions) on your broad term keywords as they are highly sought after and expensive. Create sufficient metrics to see which of those terms best move the needle with regards to the ultimate purchase decision.

The article also reminds us of the ever-expanding use of YouTube (the world's 2nd largest search engine btw). How much content are you preparing for video share sites like YouTube? Translating as much of your content and making it suitable for various channels (digital, video, podcast, print, personal) should be an important consideration of your content development strategy.

Real-time Search in Google

I'm sure many of you have read either yesterday or today about Google's new search enhancement whereby they are now including real-time search results from news sites, blogs, and social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, et al. You can sample this new feature by going here.... scroll down to the box labeled More Hot Topics, type in Obama.... then watch real-time posts from a myriad of sites spill down one after the next. Pretty cool.

Obviously this is great news (and has huge ramifications) for inbound marketeers, not the least of which is the importance of being able to serve immediate content in Google about your space, company and solutions. This now provides a channel for your timely and relevant brilliance to be found immediately by prospects, partners, customers and media.

You'll also have an opportunity to monitor and respond to mentions about your company and it's assets virtually real-time, as well as identify other openings where you can affect the conversation about your industry and its' solutions.

Yet another reason for evolving your marketing organization into a mini-publishing house to take advantage of the multiple channels to create content for your prospects and customers and further increase your awareness and build your relationships. More to come on this in the days and weeks to follow...

More SEO Tips

I've recently been helping out a friend with his new small business selling golf training aids (check out his site: http://www.athleticgolfswing.com/ the Pure Contact Connection is a winner!) and have been reminded about some areas of basic SEO that need some close attention, no matter the size of your business (I've even noticed this with global enterprise companies that have been on my radar).

I've previously mentioned the three initial areas that any website should address with regards to SEO - meta tags for title, description and keywords. Although having quality in-bound links to your site are probably at the top of the list with respect to getting crawled and ranked organically, your title meta is important and does factor into how Google and others index and rank you. Remember that the title should contain the most important searchable keywords or #1 most common search phrase that people would use to find your type of solution. Remember not to exceed more than 60 characters total in the title as most search engines may only display that number of characters in their search results.

Your meta description tag should provide a full, coherent, keyword-laden description of what your company or product does -- it's value proposition if you will. As well it should not exceed 150 characters in total to ensure it's fully displayed in any search results (this includes characters and any spaces).

These two things most people are on top of... where I see some issues is in keywords and their importance to your SEO. Due to SEO analysts finding ways to stuff keywords into web pages and trying to game the system, search engines like Google have attached minimal importance to them in indexing and ranking your site.

However that is not to say they don't play a role. Where keywords help you is ensuring that they are reflected in your title and description metas, BUT ALSO IN YOUR WEB COPY. Google looks for relevance in web pages, where keyword terms and phrases are populated throughout the site content/copy. And weave the terms into your copy in a coherent, organized way, creating a strong and compelling narrative.

Also -- since (hopefully) most of your website pages are each a little different and describe different aspects of your company or products, so too should your meta tags reflect those differences. Try not to repeat the same metas on every page, it won't help your rankings and in fact could probably hurt your indexing. Any keyword exercise you do should be for each and every primary page that you have on your site. Obviously there will be overlap in terms from page to page, but try to create the most pertinent terms for the page content you have, then reflect those terms in title, description and keyword metas, AS WELL AS your page copy.

You should see improved rankings result from these simple steps.

Wordtracker and Google Keyword Tool

As part of an SEO strategy (which is a traffic building and ultimately lead gen strategy), you're hopefully looking closely at your title, description and meta keywords to ensure that your site is fully optimized for organic site indexing.

Two indispensable tools (one free, one $59 after free 7 day trial) I use for helping to figure out keywords are:

• Google Keyword Tool: This FREE tool from Google allows you to plug in current keywords you're using (or considering) and provides keyword ideas right back to you. Simply enter your keywords (one per line) as words or phrases in the data field, hit the Get Keyword Ideas button, and after a few seconds Google provides you with related keyword terms. In addition, Google also provides local search volume figures for each word/s, global monthly search volume and the competition for these words with other advertiser. Neat stuff -- and free!
• Wordtracker: WT is one of many keyword research tools out there that I find works very well and is relatively inexpensive. Similar to the Google tool you type in your keywords and phrases and Wordtracker provides back other keywords that are most relevant to your business. In my opinion it provides a 'deeper dive" than Google as well as being able to see search rankings in engines other than Google's. It's quick and easy and can help you find some golden keyword nuggets that perhaps your competition hasn't found yet