Apr 24
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 24, 2008
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web

From Search Engine Land:

  • New Google CIO:
    Morgan Stanley’s Benjamin Fried
    News.com reports that Benjamin Fried, a Morgan Stanley managing director, has
    been pegged to fill the chief information officer spot that opened up when
    Douglas Merrill left earlier this month. Google’s confirmed the move….
  • MicroHoo: Let
    The Proxy Fight Begin!
    The Seattle PI is suggesting that the fight for control of Yahoo’s board,
    which Microsoft had previously threatened, may begin in earnest this weekend.
    Conversations with institutional shareholders have already been taking place.
    The three week deadline set by Steve Ballmer for Yahoo to come to the table
    will expire…
  • Yahoo! Launches
    SearchMonkey Developer Tool in Limited Preview
    Today, Yahoo! is providing a "limited preview" of a tool that enables
    developers to create SearchMonkey applications. Yahoo! CTO Ari Balogh will be
    unveiling the tool at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today, and more details
    are available in the Yahoo! Search Blog. Yahoo! first announced SearchMonkey
    in February…
  • US Justice
    Department Scrutinizing GooHoo Paid Search Test
    According to Reuters the US Justice Department is taking a look at the paid
    search partnership test between Google and Yahoo. According to the article,
    there are antitrust concerns raised by the test and its implications and the
    Justice Department has "initiated an investigation" of it….
  • Yahoo Search
    Circle Allows Users To Easily Expand & Narrow Results On Map
    Yahoo just announced that it has added a nifty tool to Local (called "search
    circle") that allows uses to alter the geographic scope of results by
    expanding or narrowing a circle on the map. The circle can also be dragged to
    a particular area easily, allowing for more efficient neighborhood…
  • Video: Details
    On Setting Your Site’s Geographic Target In Google Webmaster Tools
    Google launched the set geographic target feature in October of last year.
    Since then, many webmasters began experimenting with it and I have personally
    not seen too many complaints about it, which is always a good thing. Google’s
    webmaster central team said they have been receiving some questions on the…
  • Diagnosing The
    SEO Health Of Your Website
    Is your website sick? In many ways, SEO consultants are like doctors, only
    instead of analyzing your personal health symptoms, we analyze the overall
    health of your website. It’s true we’re not working with life or death
    situations the same way doctors do, but having a website that is…
  • Google Finally
    Hands Over Alleged Pedophiles Profiles On Orkut To Brazilian Authorities
    Google hands over data on suspected pedophiles to Brazil via the AFP reports
    Google has finally handed over profiles of suspected pedophiles to Brazilian
    authorities. As expected, Google did hand over 3,261 files with information
    about alleged pedophilia activities in Google’s Orkut communities. A member of
    the senate commission, Demostenes…
  • Google Image
    Ads: Display Ads For Mobile
    Yesterday Google announced mobile image ads. The ads are displayed on the
    mobile sites of publishers that are participating in AdSense for mobile (or
    that opt-in to the new program). Mobile image ads are created in users’
    AdWords accounts and require more or less the same type of setup as…
  • A Closer Look
    At EveryZing
    For those of you in need of a turn-key, hosted solution to gain natural search
    engine visibility for your video and audio content, the company EveryZing says
    they’re the ticket. EveryZing’s solution consists of a suite of products:
    ezSEARCH, ezSEO, and RAMP. The products are designed to provide users…
  • Tools For
    Engaging In Social Media
    We all know Social Media Marketing can be pretty time consuming. There are
    numerous social media communities, each requiring you to sign up, make a
    profile, and participate, in order to have any success with them. So it is
    only natural that you would like to have some helpful…
  • Link
    Development Tool Shortcuts for Firefox
    A few weeks back I did a post on my blog about creating Firefox quick search
    bookmarks. I was surprised at how well received it was, though I think people
    were most pleased with the fact that I had created a download of a very small
    selection of the…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Link Building

Local, Maps & Mobile

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Other Items

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social
News Sharing Site:

Apr 24
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 24, 2008
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web

From Search Engine Land:

  • New Google CIO:
    Morgan Stanley’s Benjamin Fried
    News.com reports that Benjamin Fried, a Morgan Stanley managing director, has
    been pegged to fill the chief information officer spot that opened up when
    Douglas Merrill left earlier this month. Google’s confirmed the move….
  • MicroHoo: Let
    The Proxy Fight Begin!
    The Seattle PI is suggesting that the fight for control of Yahoo’s board,
    which Microsoft had previously threatened, may begin in earnest this weekend.
    Conversations with institutional shareholders have already been taking place.
    The three week deadline set by Steve Ballmer for Yahoo to come to the table
    will expire…
  • Yahoo! Launches
    SearchMonkey Developer Tool in Limited Preview
    Today, Yahoo! is providing a "limited preview" of a tool that enables
    developers to create SearchMonkey applications. Yahoo! CTO Ari Balogh will be
    unveiling the tool at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today, and more details
    are available in the Yahoo! Search Blog. Yahoo! first announced SearchMonkey
    in February…
  • US Justice
    Department Scrutinizing GooHoo Paid Search Test
    According to Reuters the US Justice Department is taking a look at the paid
    search partnership test between Google and Yahoo. According to the article,
    there are antitrust concerns raised by the test and its implications and the
    Justice Department has "initiated an investigation" of it….
  • Yahoo Search
    Circle Allows Users To Easily Expand & Narrow Results On Map
    Yahoo just announced that it has added a nifty tool to Local (called "search
    circle") that allows uses to alter the geographic scope of results by
    expanding or narrowing a circle on the map. The circle can also be dragged to
    a particular area easily, allowing for more efficient neighborhood…
  • Video: Details
    On Setting Your Site’s Geographic Target In Google Webmaster Tools
    Google launched the set geographic target feature in October of last year.
    Since then, many webmasters began experimenting with it and I have personally
    not seen too many complaints about it, which is always a good thing. Google’s
    webmaster central team said they have been receiving some questions on the…
  • Diagnosing The
    SEO Health Of Your Website
    Is your website sick? In many ways, SEO consultants are like doctors, only
    instead of analyzing your personal health symptoms, we analyze the overall
    health of your website. It’s true we’re not working with life or death
    situations the same way doctors do, but having a website that is…
  • Google Finally
    Hands Over Alleged Pedophiles Profiles On Orkut To Brazilian Authorities
    Google hands over data on suspected pedophiles to Brazil via the AFP reports
    Google has finally handed over profiles of suspected pedophiles to Brazilian
    authorities. As expected, Google did hand over 3,261 files with information
    about alleged pedophilia activities in Google’s Orkut communities. A member of
    the senate commission, Demostenes…
  • Google Image
    Ads: Display Ads For Mobile
    Yesterday Google announced mobile image ads. The ads are displayed on the
    mobile sites of publishers that are participating in AdSense for mobile (or
    that opt-in to the new program). Mobile image ads are created in users’
    AdWords accounts and require more or less the same type of setup as…
  • A Closer Look
    At EveryZing
    For those of you in need of a turn-key, hosted solution to gain natural search
    engine visibility for your video and audio content, the company EveryZing says
    they’re the ticket. EveryZing’s solution consists of a suite of products:
    ezSEARCH, ezSEO, and RAMP. The products are designed to provide users…
  • Tools For
    Engaging In Social Media
    We all know Social Media Marketing can be pretty time consuming. There are
    numerous social media communities, each requiring you to sign up, make a
    profile, and participate, in order to have any success with them. So it is
    only natural that you would like to have some helpful…
  • Link
    Development Tool Shortcuts for Firefox
    A few weeks back I did a post on my blog about creating Firefox quick search
    bookmarks. I was surprised at how well received it was, though I think people
    were most pleased with the fact that I had created a download of a very small
    selection of the…

Search News From Around The Web:

Applications & Portal Features

Business Issues

Link Building

Local, Maps & Mobile

Paid Search & Contextual

Searching

SEM Industry

SEO & SEM

Social Media

Other Items

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social
News Sharing Site:

Apr 24
New Google CIO: Morgan Stanley’s Benjamin Fried
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

News.com reports
that Benjamin Fried, a Morgan Stanley managing director, has been pegged to fill
the chief information officer spot that opened up when
Douglas Merrill left
earlier this month. Google’s confirmed the move.

Click to continue reading…

Apr 24
New Google CIO: Morgan Stanley’s Benjamin Fried
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

News.com reports
that Benjamin Fried, a Morgan Stanley managing director, has been pegged to fill
the chief information officer spot that opened up when
Douglas Merrill left
earlier this month. Google’s confirmed the move.

Click to continue reading…

Apr 24
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 24, 2008
in Search Engine Roundtable
Comments Off

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Apr 24
MicroHoo: Let The Proxy Fight Begin!
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

The Seattle PI is suggesting that the fight for control of Yahoo’s board, which Microsoft had previously threatened, may begin in earnest this weekend. Conversations with institutional shareholders have already been taking place. The three week deadline set by Steve Ballmer for Yahoo to come to the table will expire this weekend, hence the Seattle PI’s speculation.

Click to continue reading…

Apr 24
The 19-Hour Website Analysis, in 20 Minutes or Less
in Search Engine Guide
Comments Off

by Stoney deGeyter

Performing a complete website review is rarely easy. I’ve found that you can start a site analysis intending to spend just a few minutes looking over it only to find that it quickly spirals into a multi-hour marathon of research. Complete website reviews can be time consuming and often produce many more hours of work beyond that.

One of the problems is that people tend want to skip right to search engine optimization forgetting that users matter. Many people want to rush into the marketing without realizing that the website itself is part of the marketing process. This is a shame.

Investing in SEO and PPC marketing, without having performed a thorough analysis of your website is largely an exercise in vain (and yes, even new websites often need a usability analysis!) You don’t have to have a perfectly usable site in order to rank well in search engines, but it is increasingly difficult to rank a site without a strong usability focus, unless you’re in a very niche industry. And even if you do rank well, without good usability you’re losing more customers than you need or want to be losing.

Where do you start in performing a usability review?

One of the hurdles many people have in performing a usability review of their own site is that they don’t know where to start. Over the past several months I’ve written a number of posts outlining various usability and website architectural elements that should be a part of any detailed review process. But going through each of those can take many hours.
Being able to do a quick-scan through a site can be a very handy skill. It will help you uncover some glaring issues without having to invest hours upon hours of time all at once. After you have performed your quick scan and have fixed the bigger issues, you then have an opportunity to go back and perform a more thorough analysis.

Here is what you need to know in order to do a quickie usability review. I’ve also provided links to my previous posts that provide you with a lot more detail and will help you perform a more thorough analysis as time permits.

19 steps for a quickie usability review

Website navigation

Site wide navigation, including top, bottom and side navigation, should be as user-friendly as possible, ensuring that your visitors find what they expect when they click a navigation link. Check to make sure your navigation shows a logical flow of topics, subtopics and subject matter within the site and it enhances the user’s ability to find key information.

See: 20 Ways to NAVIGATE to Higher Conversions

Content

The content of your website is your #1 sales tool. Content weighs heavily both in terms of how users interact with your website as well as how visitors are able to determine what you offer and what each page of your website is about. Always write for your visitors. Give them the information they need in a way that spurs them to action.

See: 9 (+1) Tips For Writing User-Friendly Content

Website Design

How the site is developed, along with the underlying coding structure, plays a significant role on whether your site meets the usability requirements of your audience. Check to make sure the overall design looks clean and doesn’t feel cluttered. Colors and fonts should be easy on the eyes and should enhance rather than distract from the visitors experience.

See: 25 Ways to DESIGN Your Way to Higher Conversions

Home Page

Your home page is the single most crucial page of your site. It is essentially your store front. Your home page should identify your site and direct your visitors to the most important information, the information they are most likely coming to your site for. Keep it clean and focused and drive your visitors quickly to the sections that are more apt for selling.

See: 7 Ways to Make Your Home Page a Home Run for Usability

About Us Page

Visitors that find their way to your About Us page tend to have a higher conversion rate than those that don’t. This is where the visitor gets to know you and your company. Make sure the page contains information on company history, biographies of managers and your mission statement.

See: 5 Easy Ways to Make Your About Us Page More About Your Customers

Contact Us Page

The Contact Us page could be considered the absolutely most important page on your site. Even if the rest of your site succeeds in the goals, if visitors fail to find the information they need to contact you then you will bring their shopping experience to a screeching halt. Always have multiple contact options and be sure web forms are working properly. Having a phone number listed is also extremely important.

See: 6 Ways to Get Your Visitors To Contact You From Your Contact Us Page

Product Pages

Product pages maintain considerable strategic importance for ecommerce websites. Your visitors enter your product pages not only with an intention to buy something (the most desired end action) but to also learn, research and compare what you have against a competitor. Your product pages must provide enough information to help you visitors make the best decision possible. Be sure that calls to action, such as “add to cart” are readily available along with relevant pricing and shipping info.

See: 12 Product Page Conversion Strategies That Shant Be Ignored

Shopping Cart

While shopping car abandonment cannot be completely eliminated, it can be dramatically reduced. It is a failure of the shopping cart page itself that leads visitors to abandon their items which they do, in fact, wish to have. Make sure your shopping cart navigation buttons (update cart, checkout, etc.) are easily found. If you have multiple steps in the check out process, outline those steps and be sure to answer any questions regarding security and shipping.

See: 8 Items Every Shopper Needs In Their Shopping Cart

Forms and Errors

If your web forms don’t function properly or it’s difficult to correct information input errors then you can lose a lot of visitors from frustration alone. Be sure to make inputting data easy by labeling fields properly, keep required information to a minimum and make sure errors are easy to understand and correct.

See: Converting Visitors Through Errors and Form Fields

On -Site Search

Implementing a search function improperly is often a greater source of frustration than not having one altogether. My rule of thumb is if you can’t deliver perfect results 80% of the time then you’re probably better off not having an on-site search. Pay attention to the location of the search bar, place it where it is typically expected, and test, test and test some more to ensure that the results are as expected. Misspell products and search for products you know you don’t carry just to make sure you can deliver relevant results for products you do carry.

See: Searching for Better On-Site Search Usability

Help and FAQ Pages

Building up your Help and FAQ pages can greatly enhance your visitor’s experience with your website, giving them much needed information and possibly saving them a phone call. Keep these pages focused on providing information that isn’t available anywhere else and make sure they are easy to find and easy to read.

See: Four Quick Ways to Improve Your HELP and FAQ Pages

Login and My Account Pages

Sites that require users to log in to access certain information and/or purchase products add an additional layer of potential complication to the usability process. Think carefully before requiring visitors to login. Do you really need that? If not, don’t force it. Be sure to provide the benefits of creating an account and link to pages that outline your security assurances.

See: 14 Usability Tips for Login and My Account Pages

Privacy and Security Issues

Your website’s privacy information and security settings can be significant hurdles when it comes to gaining trust with your visitors. Be sure you provide links to these pages where best suited and applicable. Be sure to provide as much information you can that gives assurances that their information is safe.

See: 12 Privacy and Security Issues Your Customers Care About

Site Maps

Site maps provide a dual purpose: They provide search engine spiders easy access to all of your site pages and they provide site visitors easy access to all of your site pages. The best advice is to make sure all your site map files stay current and are easy to find.

See: 9 Tips for Creating a Site Map for Visitors and Spiders

Audience Engagement

Customer engagement goes beyond just getting the customer’s attention, you must keep their attention. This can be done by providing your visitors near immediate gratification. Your content needs to get their attention, tell them what they need to purchase and link out to other important pages that can help them make the purchase decision.

See: 5 Engaging Ways to Engage Your Audience

Customer Satisfaction

Above all things you need to make sure your website provides strong customer satisfaction. You can do this by making sure information is easy to find, eliminate broken links and keep pages and images relatively small so they don’t take long to load.

See: 4 Easy Ways to Dissatisfy Your Visitors

Point of Purchase

Since the “purchase” is the ultimate conversion, it is imperative that you remove as many obstacles from the customer’s research-to-buy cycle as possible. Make sure your products are available or otherwise noted. Adding product reviews and up-sell opportunities can lend to increased sales.

See: 11 Ways Fill Your Shopper’s Cart

Visitor Trust

Your ability to convince your visitors that yours is a trustworthy business is one of the key components to getting visitors to convert into customers. Always providing prompt and complete responses to visitor inquiries. It’s also valuable to provide multiple delivery options, discounts and allow your customers to provide feedback.

See: 10 Ways to Help Your Visitors Trust You

General Issues

The selling process-from initial interest to the very last checkout page-must be able to grab shopper’s attention and proceed to drive them through to the finalization of the sale. In other words, once you have them, you don’t want to lose them. Keep your content organized and clutter-free, make sure the site looks good across the most popular browsers and make sure that you follow up after the sale.

See: 14 Website Usability Guidelines That Keep them Coming Back for More

Overall Accessibility

As more and more users gain access to the web, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that your website is accessible to all, not just a few. Be sure your website is constructed in a way that it is accessible to mobile phones, text based browsers and screen readers.

See: 6 Quick and Easy Accessibility Issues That Make Your Visitors Happy

The one thing to understand about usability is that nothing is set in stone. You can go point by point of any usability guide and still get it wrong. You can overcome that by testing. Whenever a change is made test the results. Make sure it has the intended effect and you get the results you want. If it doesn’t help, change it back and try something else. Over time you’ll incrementally improve overall site usability and find conversion rates climbing as each successful change is implemented.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

Apr 24
Google Spidering Encoded HTML in Urls?
in Search Engine Roundtable
Comments Off

Maybe so, just a spidering glitch, weird links, or sitemap error? I was searching this morning in Google doing some tests on Google’s new Whois feature. When I plugged in a domain what popped up in the first page of the results was a weird URL including encoded ampersand and other characters in front of the shown URL for the website (aboutus.org). Once I clicked on the link I got a 404 error.

Screenshot:
google spidering encoded urls

Link to Result.

Thoughts? Comments?

Apr 24
You Can’t Let the Fear Win
in Search Engine Guide
Comments Off

by Mack Collier

“I just don’t know what I would say.”

I must have heard this a dozen times at Small Business Marketing
Unleashed from attendees that were trying to explain why they aren’t
blogging or aren’t on Twitter.  But almost everyone that I talked to
was interested in learning more about blogging and Twitter, yet the
fear of not knowing what to say was holding them back.

Here is a secret about blogging; most of us have absolutely no idea what we are doing when we start.  Seriously.  And here’s another secret; there is always something new to learn.  That is the beauty of blogging and social media, we create by sharing.  We find our voice by communicating with others.   It’s not about figuring out what you can say, it’s about communicating with others.  When you start sharing and connecting with other people, you will find that your blogging voice was always there, but now you’ll have the confidence to share it with the world. 

And don’t worry if someone disagrees with what you might say, that WILL happen.  And when it does, it will likely lead to some excellent discussions!  If everyone likes you, then you don’t know enough people. 

So if you are in this place, you are curious about social media, but have no idea how to participate, then start by observing.  Start reading blogs that cover your industry.  Leave comments as you find posts that interest you.  I stressed this point during my Blogging for Business presentation, that you do NOT have to blog, but you MUST monitor the blogosphere.  Know what is being said about you and your industry. 

Start small, take baby steps, be curious.  But if nothing else, don’t let the fear make the decision for you.  The true beauty of blogging is that it gives everyone the chance to have a voice, and it would be a shame if you let fear rob us of the chance to hear yours.

Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.

Apr 24
Highlights from the SEW Blog: March 31 - April 4, 2008
in Search Engine Watch
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Featured posts to the Search Engine Watch blog in the past week.

Apr 24
Yahoo! Launches SearchMonkey Developer Tool in Limited Preview
in Search Engine Land
Comments Off

Today, Yahoo! is providing a "limited preview" of a tool that enables developers to create SearchMonkey applications. Yahoo! CTO Ari Balogh will be unveiling the tool at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today, and more details are available in the Yahoo! Search Blog. Yahoo! first announced SearchMonkey in February at SMX West, and followed up with more details in March. Yahoo! will hold a developer day on May 15th as a formal kickoff.

For now, you can sign up to be included in the preview.

Below, more about SearchMonkey and what’s available in the new developer tool.

Click to continue reading…