For many businesses, pay-per-click campaigns make good sense. The core concept is simple: pay top dollar to get top ranking, and the more you pay the more traffic you receive (I realize I’m over-simplifying here). On the other hand, organic search optimization (a.k.a. SEO) is more abstract and technical (not to mention time-consuming), and because of this many marketers opt to ignore SEO and focus only on PPC.

In this two part blog post I’ll share some thoughts on how PPC and SEO can work together to better optimize your search strategies and improve the success of both streams.

Choose the right keywords

Technical aspects of search engine optimization aside, the biggest stumbling blocks for businesses starting SEO efforts are:

a) it often takes a lot of time to actually see results for SEO

b) you need to wait a long time to determine if you are targeting the right keywords or not, and if you chose wrong – more waiting.

An easy way to avoid choosing the wrong keywords is simply to test the value of your keywords before you heavily commit to your organic search strategy. To test keywords, buy PPC ads from Google to see which ones are driving traffic to your site. PPC ads are a reliable and usable way of forecasting how a particular keyword might direct qualified traffic and conversions if optimized on a regular page for the organic results. So wherever a natural search optimization (NSO) forecast is needed, paid search can act as a reliable predictor.

There are also a number of great conversion tracking tools that show you which of your keywords will convert well. Bid on a variety of keywords tightly related to your business, and use keyword suggestion tools to see what you have missed. Odds are you will miss obvious keyword phrases – especially juicy long-tail terms. Find out which keywords perform well, and set up your initial SEO keyword strategy based on the top performing terms.

Blend Web analytics reports

Having organic and paid search results reported in the same place helps us to better understand the relationship between the two and think about a searcher’s complete journey, rather than paid or organic in isolation. Use your Web analytics tool to segment traffic by source (PPC and Organic Search) side-by-side for particular keywords.

Reporting PPC and SEO in tandem is advantageous in a number of ways, even for determining keywords that aren’t performing for either stream which most likely means your prospects just aren’t searching for those terms.

Blended reporting helps you identify the keywords for which you should be optimizing your Web site. Optimized pages will rank high on the search engine results pages, eliminating the need to buy those keywords (although there are advantages to showing up everywhere as well – see “Blanket Branding” in part 2 of this post coming soon).

Optimize Web content with PPC ad copy

Use the successful copy in your paid search marketing campaigns to your advantage. If it works in PPC, it’s likely that it can be transferred to your organic content optimization to help boost natural Web page rankings as well. It’s easy to change PPC ad titles, links and content on the fly, and analyze the results of these changes more quickly than waiting for the results of SEO efforts. Does a particular keyword/phrase used in the title increase clicks? Does the ad text compel readers to click? The winning content and keywords found from playing around with PPC ad content can then be applied more confidently to your Web site content optimization efforts for SEO purposes.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog post in which I’ll discuss more abstract, yet equally important ways PPC and SEO can work together in regards to landing pages, blanket branding, and the long-tail search.

Active Diversions Website 2009

Orangeville, Ontario had a requirement for additional Co-Ed Adult recreational sports leagues for the Spring and Summer.  Darryn Stevenson and Katrina Lawson decided to take this need and turn it into a business and have started Active Diversions.  Active Diversions offers Ultimate Frisbee, Flag Football and Beach Volleyball leagues currently to any Orangeville and Surrounding area residents interested in some fun, active outdoor activity.

More information about activediversions.com or go directly to the new activediversions site here!

Sitemaps are essential to creating a successful site from both a usability perspective and (of course) a search engine perspective. Implementing an HTML sitemap is a relatively simple task for any Web site, but the implementation of an XML sitemap (the standard sitemap’s cooler, more important big brother) is a trickier proposition and if it’s set up incorrectly, it could actually be detrimental to your rankings.

The Good: Why XML sitemaps?

“Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL…” (Source: http://www.sitemaps.org).

Unlike a standard HTML sitemap, which is essentially just an unordered list of links to the important pages on your site, an XML sitemap conveys other important information targeted directly at the search engine spiders:

• Assigning a priority to your pages: XML sitemaps can indicate (on a 1-5 scale with 1 being most important) the priority of certain pages in relation to other pages on your site. This is a great way to tell the spiders how to prioritize each page of content, resulting in your most important pages being ranked higher than your less important pages.*
• Passing content update information: An XML sitemap can also include two tags:

a) changefreq – tells the spiders how often a page is updated and indicates how often it is likely to change

b) lastmod – tells the spiders when a page was last changed and/or updated
*Google is clear to say that the information you pass is considered to be a “hint” as to how content should be indexed by search engine spiders crawling your site.  As such, there is no guarantee that they will index or rank your pages exactly how you indicate. In addition to this, Google Webmaster Central provides some helpful information when you have a sitemap that can’t be overlooked. All of the above being said, Yahoo! and MSN also both look for XML sitemaps.

The Bad: Potential problems with XML sitemaps

• Keeping your sitemap up-to-date: Unless your sitemap is directly connected to a Web content management system (Web CMS) or database that generates the sitemap every time a change is made to a page and submits it to Google, it’s easy for your XML sitemap to quickly become out-of-date.
• Competitive intelligence: If you’re telling the search engines the relative priority of all of your pages, you can bet this information will also be of interest to your competitors. Unfortunately, there’s no way to protect your sitemap such that only the search engines can access it.
• Reduction in natural crawling of your site: Some camps are recommending that XML sitemaps be implemented and verified (through Google, Yahoo!, etc.) but not actually submitted to the engines. The gist of these arguments (and they are valid) is that:

a) you probably aren’t as smart as the spiders at determining the relative “importance” of one page over another on your site (business blinders, not knowing your visitors, etc.), and

b) by adding an XML sitemap to the search engines you are telling them to ignore pages that you may have missed on the sitemap, which may in turn cause problems with crawling. In fact, natural spider crawls will often find issues with your architecture that you weren’t aware of.
Given the information above, if your site is new and doesn’t have hundreds (or thousands) of pages, it’s usually a good idea to create an XML sitemap but NOT submit it to the search engines – at least not until the site has been crawled and you’ve been able to determine if there are any problems with your architecture.

Submitting your sitemap

Google Webmaster Tools [http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/]

First, set up a Google account. Next, verify that you are the Web site owner through either Meta Tag or file creation. Google provides very clear instructions about how to do this – essentially, you need to have access to your site to perform these actions. Once you have been verified as the site owner, you can submit the URL of your sitemap. Google Webmaster Tools also provides a host of other information including crawl errors, pages with the highest PageRank, top search queries for your site, and much more.

Yahoo! Site Explorer [http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/]

Much like Google Webmaster Tools, first you require a Yahoo! account and then you’ll need to verify that you are the Web site owner. Yahoo! will then provide you with a file to upload to the root of your site. Once you have been verified as the site owner, you can submit the URL of your sitemap to Yahoo! Site Explorer.

MSN [http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx]

Currently, you can simply submit your XML sitemap through MSN’s regular URL submission page.

Redirects can be individual pages, assets or directories, but they can also be used for entire sites or domains.

How is a redirect accomplished?

There are many ways to complete redirects, but the one and only correct way to redirect visitors from one page to another is via a 301 redirect. 301 redirects are controlled on the server side, with Internet Information Services (IIS) or a .htaccess file. While pushing all visitors to the proper page, a redirect also tells the search engine spiders that it’s a permanent relocation of page “a” to page “b” and the only page that counts now is “b”.

How do redirects affect SEO?

Any redirect achieved by any method other than using a server-side 301 redirect runs the risk of negatively affecting your search indexing and ranking, including meta redirects. Incorrect redirects can be flagged as duplicate content if a spider actually has the chance to index the originating page and can often be flagged as spam. Why? Because redirects are a common way for spammers to send someone from a URL that appears to be on the up-and-up to a less legitimate location. That being said, it’s fine to use meta redirects as a short-term solution, especially as a stop-gap to prevent visitors or spiders from landing on your 404 page (Page Not Found error page) when the page they’re looking for no longer exists.

How are redirects used for non-www domains?

An important redirect that is often missed and should be considered for every site is the domain redirect of the non-www domain to the www domain or vice-versa (i.e., pushing all traffic from example.com to www.example.com). Most sites are set up by default to direct multiple “headers” to a single location, making all versions of a domain point to one primary site on the server. This setup is standard practice and ensures that anyone typing your domain in either format (www vs. non-www) will arrive at the correct location. The problem with leaving your site in this state is that you’re essentially providing multiple domains for the site and someone visiting your site using either the www or non-www will continue to travel through your site via the domain name entered.

Want to see if this is happening on your site? Open two browser windows or tabs and type your Web site URL in both, one starting with www and the other without. Does one version end up changing to the other (i.e. does example.com get changed to www.example.com) or do they both remain as originally entered?

Although this might not affect the visitor experience, it’s not uncommon for the search engines to crawl and index the www and non-www versions of your site separately. Although you won’t be penalized for duplicate content, it will definitely dilute your results in the search engine results pages (SERPs). And, not only will you lose some link authority (link juice), you’ll essentially be competing against yourself for the same keywords.

Google has recently made an effort to reduce the need to do a 301 redirect of your www to your non-www domain by including a “picker” option within Google Webmaster Tools. Once you’ve signed up and verified your Web site with Google, you can tell Google which “version” of your site you consider to be your primary version and then Google will merge all indexing and traffic information they gather from crawling your site into the version you choose – eliminating the problem of diluted site performance in the SERPs caused by having multiple versions of your Web site.

Each year, many in the blogging community post together to increase awareness for a common cause. This year the cause is Poverty. Since I love lists and don’t have a bunch of time to actually research and write an article of my own, I figured I’d provide a list of some articles worth reading related to fighting Poverty (and promoting Conservation, Sustainabilty etc. in the process):

• Building A Sustainable Economy
• Promoting Global Conservation
• Worldvision stories
• How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work
• One International – not an article but a cool site

I’m a huge fan of top 10 lists of all types from the classic Letterman to the modern Digg meme posts. So today I’ve compiled a list of some of the key points to consider when promoting link building for your site. The interesting “Art Imitating Life (or SEO)” bit here is that lists tend to be one of the more successful viral techniques for link building…which brings me to my Link Building List – and just to be different it’s a Top 11:

1. Create lists

Create an interesting list to produce viral link-bait – content that is interesting enough to “bait” many people to either link to it or bookmark it via social bookmarking sites like Digg. The fun thing about lists is that they can be completely unrelated to your site or industry and still be a valid format for a linking strategy. From an SEO context perspective, however, the list content should be somewhat related.

2. Develop authority

This one is a bit intangible, but if you can prove that you are an authority on a topic, people will link to you and the search engines might even like you better.

3. Serialize content & syndication

Produce compelling serial content and push this content out into the inter-blog-cyber-sphere. The more people read your content, the more likely they will send it to others or link directly to it and ultimately this will increase both your authority and your links. Alternately, pull in compelling serial content to your site (with permission of course) from external sources and feeds. Nobody says the content on your site needs to be 100% proprietary (ok your compliance dept. might). Examples of Serial content: RSS feeds, Articles, News feeds, FAQs, Press Releases, Newsletters.

4. Use directories

Submit your site to directories – simple enough as long as you stick to the legitimate ones like DMOZ and Yahoo. Get yourself on a few of the old-school “link-farms” and this strategy starts to work against you really quick. Generally speaking, stick to the directories you know and make sure that you are only getting placed into appropriate “contextual” categories (vs grouped with many unrelated sites with unrelated categories). When in doubt, you could always create a legitimate directory of your own – perhaps with affiliate industry sites or relevant complementary sites.

5. Leverage social bookmarking

Encourage visitors to use a social bookmarking site (or meme trackers such as Digg) to promote your site content. This is as simple as placing the social bookmarking icons and/or links as close to your content as possible. Submit interesting content to these sites directly and encourage everybody you know to do the same. For most sites, hitting the first page of Digg for even a short time will send more traffic to your site then you could imagine. Of course, nothing says that all of this traffic will be qualified but it might lead to further linking which is always a good thing.

6. Get involved locally and “industrially”

If your target audience is local, sign up for as many local business directories and associations as possible (Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, Local Listings, News sites etc.). Also sign up for any associations, affiliate sites or industry specific sites for your business or product. Definitely find ways to be associated (and linked) with educational and government sites. Generally speaking, links from .edu and .gov (also .org) will automatically provide higher link authority than any .com.

7. Promote interaction and constructive criticism

This one is a little tricky, but people really like to read what others think and then add their two cents as well. These days, allowing people to review your product or comment on an article, along with proper moderation (not full on policing) can be an extremely successful means of producing traffic and linking. Although there is always a fine line between constructive criticism and all out product bashing, the public is much more savvy and is much more likely to trust a company that allows conversation and external reviewing of products or services. And once conversations start they often grow a life of their own and draw traffic.

8. Blog and be blogged

This might be obvious but a huge source of links and authority on the internet these days comes from the blogging community (aka the blogosphere). Having bloggers (especially industry specific or high profile bloggers) blog about you or your product or service can often cause a great deal of buzz in the blogging community and as such result in many links back to your site. On the other hand, having a corporate blog or industry expert blogs produced by your company or staff can also be very effective. Not only does it show that your company is progressive and current, it might also position you and your staff as experts (or not, depending on the quality of the content in the posts) for your industry and related topics. At the very least, blogging will allow a dialogue between your company and your visitors. Of course, forums can act in much the same way but traditionally are much more involved to maintain and moderate.

9. Trade and buy links, PPC & advertisements

There really is nothing wrong with good old fashioned advertising and there’s certainly nothing wrong with soliciting the right sites for the right links back to yours (reciprocal or otherwise). As always, be careful how you do this and definitely be diligent if you are buying links (i.e. signing up for an ad service or Pay-Per-Click.) to ensure that you are paying for a service that is white-hat and won’t be detrimental to your rankings.

10. Give stuff away

Everyone likes a good deal, especially just about anything free. There are always opportunities to promote your site by offering incentives on the cheap. Promoting these offers around to meme trackers, blogging sites, even forums will often become a viral link juggernaut (especially if the deal is a great one) quicker than you can say “free t-shirt”.

11. Be social

This has been touched on in some of the items above, but the bottom line is to get out there (metaphorically and literally) to interact with those who could become visitors, linkers and maybe even converters. Comment on blogs, interact on forums, get involved with social media and social networking communities and even physically get out and go to industry tradeshows, have your staff speak as experts at conferences, join local committees and networks that allow every opportunity for people to get to know who you are and what you do.

In the interest of trying to add some minor relevance to my blog posts (this is supposed to be a Web Dev blog as well as a Personal Blog…..we’ll debate the intelligence of this choice some other time), I’ve decided to create a few posts on the pros and cons of two amazing Open Source CMS/Blogging applications: WordPress and Joomla.

This first post will be basically an introduction to my criteria and my experiential background that is leading me to write these posts…..

First, why I’m talking about these two apps:

I really want to refine the process and time it takes for me to roll out client sites. My time is a commodity and I can’t afford to spend every hour I’m not at my day job implementing sites for my “Wired Serf” Clients. That being said, I’m currently in the process of doing re-designs for two clients and I’ve chosen to implement one of them with Joomla and the other with WordPress. Conveniently, both sites are both relatively small and my clients flexible enough to allow me to experiment in this way.

So for the last month or so, I’ve been hammering away into the wee hours of the morning (and many hours of my weekends) with both of these applications in a scramble to learn both apps and launch both sites in a timely manner.

My Criteria for Judgement:

Next I need to outline my criteria (loose…likely to be refined) for determining the affectiveness and future Wired Serf – Usability of these two apps. Of course, you have to bear in mind that both of these apps were originally designed to serve different purposes (WordPress being strictly a CMS for creating Blogs and Joomla a CMS for larger non-blog websites), and it is interesting to see how similar in approach these two apps end up being in the end.

Criteria:

• Ease of implementation- Templates
• Ease of implementation – Content
• Ease of implementation – Plugins/Mambots etc.
• SEO compliance
• Usability
• User Access Control
• Speed of App – Front and Back End

My next post on this topic will start the comparison and grading process…..let the sweating begin Joomla and WordPress….

Realistically though, there are likely going to be a whole bunch of Trip posts before I get back to this one…..Keeping in line with my habit of posting personal stuff way more than Web Dev stuff.

read more | digg story

• Sushi and lots of Saki with Charles and Ali from Johns Hopkins
• Lost in a downpour at the Washington Zoo (Watch for attacking Tamarins and serenading teens)
• The eerie-coolness of the Washington Mall on a warm-rainy night.
• The powerful experience (much deeper than I would have thought) of actually seeing things like the Korean, WW1, WW2 and Vietnam memorials and the Washington Monument.
• Interview with a Stalker…(I’d explain, but then I’d have to kill you)

But, I digress….

The show was fun, met a bunch of CF developers (some a little more “Odd” then others….). My topic was “What Search Engines Want – A Developers Guide” and I was able to expunge my guru-like knowledge (Wow, I must have someone fooled besides myself) of how SEO should be considered when developing web applications. The talk went well, with a few minor glitches (had to use my own laptop and the guy ahead of me went over his time by about 10mins but nothing major). I felt good and paced myself enough to have a short Q&A at the end. Judging by the number of business cards I received afterwards and the number of people who came to talk with me afterwards I think it was well received. Either way, the discussion was a great experience and certainly one I’d like to make a relatively regular one.

Next I have to figure out how to get to the Search Engine Strategy conference in San Jose (August).

The plane ride was interesting, a twin-prop, 40 seater with a penchant for hitting turbulance. Was kinda fun though. I’m going to check out the Baltimore Aquarium tomorrow evening after training (and stress, and caffeine).