Imagine TiVo on steroids combined with a search engine like Google. It exists today but for the enterprise market. That product is called SnapStream TV and it allows thousands of hours of programming to be recorded – up to 10 shows simultaneously – and then, using closed caption transcripts, brings keyword search and related capabilities to any content element in that recorded programming.
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.
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.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web
From Search Engine Land:
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
Business Issues
Local, Maps & Mobile
Link Building
Microhoo
Paid Search & Contextual
Searching
SEM Industry
SEO & SEM
Social Media
Video, Music & Image Search
Web Analytics
Other Items
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
Yahoo’s recent acquisition of IndexTools begs the question: do we need another free Web analytics tool? That depends on how much of IndexTools’ capabilities remain in Yahoo’s free offering.
by Jackie Baker
This week we’re looking at an e-commerce website for educational toys, Brainwaves Toys. I met the proprietor, Karen, at Small Business Marketing Unleashed
last month. She’s having a blast with the site because she’s passionate
about what she sells, but she’s new to website marketing and looking
for ways to improve.
As always, I asked three questions that are critical to guiding website analysis:
The
current Brainwaves site has done many things well, especially usability
of the shopping cart and checkout process. However, it needs a little
help with design and navigation to get visitors to that point.
Navigation: Which one do I use and where in the world do I start?
Research
shows that confusing navigation is the number one way to lose
customers. If people have a hard time finding their way around your
website, they’re just going to give up and leave. And when you have
great products that really sell themselves like Brainwaves does, you
don’t want your navigation to get in the way of a sale.
When
you enter on the Brainwaves homepage, there are three different ways to
navigate the site. There is a global horizontal bar organized by age
group. There’s a global vertical bar that’s not particularly organized
at all and mixes functional (shop by price, age) with topical. And
there’s another featured section in the middle that is also organized
by topic, some of which are in the left sidebar and some that aren’t.
The housekeeping links such as about us and contact are buried in the
footer. While they need to be there, they also need to be more
prominent “above the fold” (visible without having to scroll).
With
the variety of toys for sale on Brainwaves, I like the idea of having
two sets of navigation: one for age and one for toy category. It seems
sensible that people would use one of those two systems to browse.
However, they should be kept entirely separate from each other.
Research
also shows that users scan web pages, and won’t bother to look at lists
with more than 5-7 links. If you have more than that, break them up
into categories and subcategories that are logical and easy to scan.
Always
keep your customers in mind; organize your navigation in a way that
makes sense to them, call each link what they would call it
(”educational toys” takes visitors to the home page, so call it
“home”!), and make it easy to scan and browse. If you aren’t sure if
your organization or labeling (words in the links) make sense to your
customers, test it! Find a friend who is in your target market and ask
his/her opinion.
Design: Use the header to say who/what you are and draw people in.
There is so much going on in the header of this website, that the main message is getting lost.
There are two items that should be in the header of every website:
Tagline
The
header is your chance to tell visitors what this website is about and
why you are unique. It needs to be the first place people look. And be
sure to create the tagline as html, not in an image. Search engine
spiders ignore images, and a strong tagline that says what you are
about and uses your primary keywords help search engines and people to
classify your site.
This particular tagline “Educational Toys
for Gifted Children,” uses a primary keyword and states simply what
visitors will find on the site. But it doesn’t tell visitors why this
site is unique. And I’m afraid the phrase “gifted children” will turn a
good portion of visitors away. It really needs to be re-worked to
include the unique selling proposition. For example:
“Hand-picked educational toys that enhance learning, development, and sense of play”
It
says exactly what you’ll find on the site, (toys to enhance learning,
development, and sense of play), includes a primary key phrase
(educational toys), and says why the site is unique (hand-picked).
Images
Use
the header to display images that target your audience and draw people
in. While the Verified Merchant and GeoTrust logos are good to include
on the site somewhere, they aren’t important enough to take up such a
prominent location, and can go below the fold or in a sidebar. I’d love
to see an image of a child playing watched by a parent or a grandparent
… something colorful that screams “for kids.”
Keep in mind
that the header should be consistent on every single page of the
website. Remember, on average only 5% of your visitors will enter at
the home page anyway (and that’s a good thing!).
Marketing: You’ve got a great personality, so use it!
The
best way for a small business to compete online with the big guys is to
let their personalities shine through. I’ve met Karen, so I know
first-hand that she’s got a vivacious, passionate, knowledgeable, and
endearing personality. She’s incredibly passionate about educational
toys that foster creativity and learning. She’s a mom who has raised
three children. She surfs the internet and hand picks every one of the
toys that she sells through Brainwaves. What parent wouldn’t connect
with that instead of a cold, distant corporation just looking to make a
buck?
There are ways to leverage a great personality both on and
off site. I’d love to see a letter from Karen and/or a bio on the about
page. She could really play up that Brainwaves is a “mom and pop” shop
run by a mom who is passionate about learning. Adding her voice to the
copy and using her personality as a main selling point would definitely
boost trust and interest in her target market. I’d even include a
picture of Karen and her family. On the contact form, say that visitors
are contacting Karen directly, not just a help desk. In the product
descriptions, incorporate the “hand-picked” unique selling point by
saying why each item was chosen.
This is the kind of situation
where I would definitely recommend that Karen start a blog. She’s a
good writer, passionate about her product and site, and has a lot to
say. Her blog could feature cool new products as she finds them, talk
about child development and learning, and share personal stories of
raising her three kids. A blog would showcase her personality and
knowledge, build trust, and drive links and traffic to the Brainwaves
website.
She could also build relationships by sharing her
expertise and passion by leaving comments on other blogs and getting
involved in parenting and education forums. Remember, you must always
contribute relevant information to the discussion; these ARE NOT place
to sell your products or just link to your site.
Usability: An easy checkout process is key to sales.
The Brainwaves website does a great job of making it easy for users to buy:
A few general issues I noticed:
The general
structure of the Brainwaves website is good and the product
descriptions are strong. With a few key changes to the navigation,
adding some personality, and re-focusing the header, this site could
really stand out.
Thanks For Your Submissions
I
was overwhelmed over the past week by the many website submissions for
review in this column. If you submitted your site, it may be a while
until I get to it. I will email you a heads up the week that I review
your site.
If you are a small business and would like to
submit your site for review in this weekly column, email your URL and
the following information to jackie@sitelogic.com:
Want more from your web site?
Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford.
Our sister site, Search Marketing Now, is offering a nice mix of free webcasts
later this month, ranging from dealing with big PPC campaigns, big brand SEO and
bridging the offline-online gap in analytics. SMN webcasts run about 40-50 minutes and start at 1 PM Eastern
Time. Here’s more about each one:
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
Yahoo has acquired my favorite search browser plugin for Apple Safari, Inquisitor. Inquisitor is an extremely useful search refinement and search aid tool for the Apple browser market. Inquisitor offers autocomplete, refinements, suggestions, and also allows you to add any search engine you like, plus create your own personalized and advanced query operators, much like OpenSearch.
I spoke with Ariel Seidman, the director of product management for this product and he answered a number of questions I had about the acquisition.
Dear all, it is raining and icky outside, so today’s a good day for a buzz roundup. Enjoy. 
Landing Page Load Time: Check
Your Google AdWords Quality Score now factors in your landing page load time. If you have a fast landing page, you’ll get a great score. In other words, get good hosting!
Google Adwords Enforces Display URL
It only took a few months since Google wanted to enforce the URL display policy so that the landing page URL would match the display URL in Google AdWords campaigns, and now the policy seems to be in full force with pretty much accurate reporting.
Strange Google Rankings Still Plaguing the Internets
Barry likes to coin phrases, and in this case, floating four seems pretty accurate. He mentions that some results in position 4 seem to be floating around — they show up on the first page, 4th ranking, but then later disappear. There are at least two people who noticed this strange behavior and we’re not sure what to make of it.
The minus 60 penalty is not an illusion, according to Google. Google has admitted that it’s a real penalty, and that this penalty usually involves cleaning up spam.
In our May 2008 Google SERP update, we’re seeing some big traffic declines, which may be related (or not) to the aforementioned symptoms.
Google AdWords and AdSense Reports Displaying Incorrect Data
Earlier this week, AdSense and AdWords data was not being properly recorded and Google’s engineering team took a looka at it. The next day, Google acknowledged that they fixed the problem but some people are still reporting inaccurate data.
Microhoo is Not in the Future
After all that anticipation, Microsoft has decided not to buy Yahoo. So long, Microhoo.
Setting Your Geographic Location in Google Webmaster Tools May Not Work
It seems that setting your geographic location in Webmaster Tools may not necessarily give you the rankings you’re hoping for. For example, if you have a .com and you’re in the UK, and you set your site to the UK geographic region, you’re probably not as lucky as the person who has the .co.uk domain, it seems. UK people, give the US folks your .coms (I’m talking to you, Tamar!) 
Please Tell Me that This is a Joke
If Google AdWords are really going Comic Sans, I’m going to puke. Worst. Font. Ever.
Yahoo’s Universal Search is Here
It’s time for Yahoo Universal Search, at least in India where Glue Pages are in beta. My verdict: very nice.
Monday is the Best Day for Google AdSense Payouts
Want Google AdSense money? Yoru best bet is to focus on monetizing your Mondays. We polled you, our valuable readers, and found that most of you are making the most of your dough on the first day of the week. I guess that’s when people get click-happy from work boredom.
SEO Debate is Back
We love SEO. Seriously. Every day, there’s another debate about SEO, and a bunch of people always come up to defend it. I am waiting for Danny Sullivan’s post on how SEO is here to stay. I know he’s working on it.
Win a Date with Barry
We’re having a reader survey, and the winner gets some schwag and a free dinner with Barry. Now this guy is a fun date, so I suggest that you all participate right now!
A WebmasterWorld member wants confirmation if getting multiple links would cause a penalty in the SERPs. He notes that very popular sites which rank on the first page of Google have a lot of links, including those from “shady” places. Why, then, can’t he do the same thing on his smaller site?
Some forum members believe that the age and authority of site matter in this case. Some sites just always get inbound links. Others don’t unless something is up.
A new site that gets like 20 links per day, then all of a sudden gets 2000 in one day, well then there’s tom foolery going on there and the penalty gets slapped. Once that penalty is slapped, over time it will go away.
So be careful when you build your links, because you can find a dent in your rankings, but as forum members note, the rankings will generally improve.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld member wants confirmation if getting multiple links would cause a penalty in the SERPs. He notes that very popular sites which rank on the first page of Google have a lot of links, including those from “shady” places. Why, then, can’t he do the same thing on his smaller site?
Some forum members believe that the age and authority of site matter in this case. Some sites just always get inbound links. Others don’t unless something is up.
A new site that gets like 20 links per day, then all of a sudden gets 2000 in one day, well then there’s tom foolery going on there and the penalty gets slapped. Once that penalty is slapped, over time it will go away.
So be careful when you build your links, because you can find a dent in your rankings, but as forum members note, the rankings will generally improve.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
A High Rankings Forums member wants to know if header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4…) are weighted on search engines.
The answer is probably not, but some people think that there’s minimal weight from search engines. The point is that header tags are for user readability versus focusing on search engines. If you wanted to test the theory, you could remove the header tags and instead use CSS to see how it performs.
Additionally, it’s important to note that if this is something spammers start using more heavily, chances are search engines will devalue it even more (if header tags are even a metric in the algorithm). That said, do your own testing and come up with some results, but the skepticism is pretty obvious from the post.
Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.
A High Rankings Forums member wants to know if header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4…) are weighted on search engines.
The answer is probably not, but some people think that there’s minimal weight from search engines. The point is that header tags are for user readability versus focusing on search engines. If you wanted to test the theory, you could remove the header tags and instead use CSS to see how it performs.
Additionally, it’s important to note that if this is something spammers start using more heavily, chances are search engines will devalue it even more (if header tags are even a metric in the algorithm). That said, do your own testing and come up with some results, but the skepticism is pretty obvious from the post.
Forum discussion continues at High Rankings Forum.
In the middle of the week, my good friend Jeremy Schoemaker, aka Shoemoney, blogged that SEO has no future. He believes that personalized data will be more important, especially from the toolbar, user history, and analytics data. Social voting is becoming more important, and he explains that his sitelinks are the most trafficked pages on his site.
Well, the SEO community did not really want to hear that, so there have been at least three individual posts on Sphinn about it.
Marketing Pilgrim writer Greg Howlett says that search engines are getting too smart and that search engines won’t want to reward companies for playing SEO games.
In one rebuttal, Ian Lurie talks about how SEO really does have a future. Smart SEO makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site. It helps create a long term content strategy. It keeps good businesses out of trouble. It ensures the discoverability of content on your site. SEO isn’t about looking for loopholes but for keeping search engines happy.
In another response, Michael Gray also says that SEO has a future. SEO will have to clean up the mess of visual elements, especially flash and other technologies that are not search-engine friendly. SEOs have to explain viral marketing, content creation, and more. SEO is here to stay, he says, and there’s nothing that anyone can say to stop that.
In a third response, Taylor Pratt says that SEO will exist as long as search engines exist. He says that while search engines are smart, SEOs are smart too and can work alongside search engines.
On one hand, forum members think that this is a great thing to start saying because then there will be less competition as newbie SEOs don’t actually participate in SEO. Others say that SEO is not going to die but become more important, especially as big companies start partnering up with SEO firms and consultants for work.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn, Sphinn, Sphinn, and Sphinn.
In the middle of the week, my good friend Jeremy Schoemaker, aka Shoemoney, blogged that SEO has no future. He believes that personalized data will be more important, especially from the toolbar, user history, and analytics data. Social voting is becoming more important, and he explains that his sitelinks are the most trafficked pages on his site.
Well, the SEO community did not really want to hear that, so there have been at least three individual posts on Sphinn about it.
Marketing Pilgrim writer Greg Howlett says that search engines are getting too smart and that search engines w