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You can’t just put your website on the net with right keywords and all the right touches and expect your traffic and ranking will remain constant. As the web is an ever changing landscape, you have to keep track of your own web results like what is happening with the competition and also the best and highest ranked sites. There are many useful tools to help you find out what exactly is happening.

1. A tool which you can use to test your own website links or other websites for broken links:

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

2. With this tool you can check search engines for the number of back links to your URL i.e. other web pages linking to your site:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/

3. It sometimes becomes important to know where the servers of your hosting company are physically located. Because, some search engines like Google have the ability to filter search results based on their physical location called geotargeting. This could be used to determine why your site is showing in only a certain country. This link can also be used to research the country location of a particular competitor’s website:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/

4. In order to track the location of the visitor or a customer to your website:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/

5. In order to check the Yahoo! web ranking of your’s or your competitor’s website use :

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/webrank/

6. Here is a link to check the web ranking of a website using a Mac or Apple computer:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/pagerank-mac/

7. You need a Google AdSense account for using this. This link provides you with charts and reports which will help you analyze traffic, clicks, and results from your AdSense advertising

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-charts/

8. If you have an AdSense account, you can analyze your website address or another website address to see what Google ads will be displayed when the customer selects certain website names or keywords:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/

9. This link will take you to a cooperative advertising network where you can join to display and

share your ads with other website owners:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/

10. You can add the Search Functionality on your website which uses Google. This works only if your site is listed in the Google Index.

 http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/search/

11. Here are some links to free website counters which you can use on your website to track your traffic and hits:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/counter/

http://www.amazingcounters.com/?ref=gad033

http://www.cyber-counter.com/signup.php

http://www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html

http://www.free-counters.net/

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It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings. 

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

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Your website is the hub of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like how they could if they were dealing with an offline company. Hence, people do judge you by your covers. This is where a good design comes in.

Imagine if you are running an offline company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professionally, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.

Similarly, the same case is with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute “quick fix”, you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.

On the opposite, if you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. You are organised, focused and you really mean business.

On the other hand, you should also have anything related to your company well designed. From business cards to letterheads to promotional brochures, every little bit matters. This is because as you grow your business, these items become the face of your business. Once again, think of the “salesperson dressed shabbily” anology, and you will get my point.

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A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.

1) Navigation purposes

A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate through your pages with the utmost ease.

2) Conveying your site’s theme

When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get the “big picture” of your site by reading through each page, and by doing that you will be saving your visitors’ time.

3) Site optimization purposes

When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what happens when search engine robots hit this page — they will follow the links on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to be placed prominently on the front page of your website.

4) Organization and relevance

A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird’s eye view of your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site with everything sorted according to their relevance.

From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you will be able to keep your website easily accesible and neatly organized for everyone.

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Business development on the Internet is more challenging than ever these days. Though search engine optimization (SEO) is only a small component of an integrated marketing plan, it’s an important one.

Previous article, “Are You in the Dark About SEO Pricing?” prompted this response from John Heinrich of www.marketingdoctor.com:”This [SEO pricing] is an area of extreme interest to us, as a marketing consulting firm with most of its work in Web site redesign. We find that most sites we are fixing haven’t even thought about the best keywords, let alone SEO. Keep this thread going.”

There are a lot of sites out there that could benefit from search engine optimization, which includes keyword development. Those new to this column might want to get more information on keywords by reading “Finding the Keywords That Will Help Customers Find You” and “Choose Your Words With Care” for help in selecting key phrases. If you farm out this task, most professional SEO firms will provide key phrase selection as a part of your SEO campaign.

SEO is a cottage industry and requires direct service contact with the client due to the level of detail work necessary. Here are some helpful hints to help you determine if outsourcing your SEO campaign is right for you.

Outsourcing to an SEO Firm

For those of you considering outsourcing to an SEO firm, a review of “Selecting a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Agency” will help get you started in the right direction. Another excellent resource is the recent ICONOPOLL on search engine optimization wherein ICONOCAST conducted a subscriber survey on selecting an SEO firm.Most SEO firms will provide references to marketing consultants and/or Web designers with an SEO campaign, respecting the agent/client relationship. By the same token, marketing consultants and Web site designers are usually very happy to pass along positioning tasks to SEO professionals who eat and sleep SEO seven days a week.

Developing an In-House SEO Campaign

Now, should you choose to develop an in-house SEO campaign, here are some general guidelines:

• Do a lot of research. Web Developer’s Virtual Library is one place to start, but don’t stop there. Go immediately to Search Engine Watch and catch the latest news and current developments.
• Plan for a long-term commitment. Six to twelve months is only the beginning. Planning a campaign will require a significant amount of your time, so make sure you have all your resources in-house before you begin.
• Get primary resources. Get a system administrator with database programming experience devoted to SEO, a dedicated SEO server, IP hosting capabilities, and an SEO specialist.
• Read, read, read. Read everything you can get your hands on for the first several months. This will help you distinguish the music from the noise. You will experience information overload, and it will seem like everyone has a solution, theory, or something to sell you.
• Bring cash. You will find that some of the tools and software you buy will need significant modification, and this will require knowledgeable personnel who can forecast a master plan.

Whichever way you go, whether it is outsourcing or staying in-house, just plan on a long-term commitment. Also, be prepared for changes, losses, upsets, and failure. SEO is all about ups and downs — you make hay while the sun shines, but with SEO, the sun might shine all day long, and you still feel like giving up. But you cannot give up, however demanding things might seem.

So to better prepare yourself, keep the following SEO challenges in mind:

• There are hundreds of thousands of new Web pages submitted daily.
• The many engines and directories tend to vary in the way they accept submissions.
• The rules governing submission of documents to search engines and directories change frequently.
• The criteria for ranking pages as highly relevant within engines or directories are always changing.
• The software to accomplish continuity for all engines and directories is not available.
• Directories require human intervention.
• Engines require humans who understand how engines work — and even then the engines change.
• What works in February is probably no good in May.
• Directories have a way of changing their tree structure, leaving you back where you started.
• Engines and directories get purchased by other companies, then change their entire format.
• You deal with 10 different engines and directories, and 1 is enough to drive you mad.
• Once you’ve accomplished your goal, it’s time to learn about the changes that have occurred.

Overall, it’s really about developing a system. When you have a system to handle all of these potential problems on a day-by-day basis, you’ll be doing very well. Developing the system can be technically complex, extensive, and expensive. No system will operate without failure, redesign, and endless hours of devotion. You must have a passion for this work, or you will wither away like a plant without water. It’s plain old hard work, but it can be very rewarding.

So, is it better to outsource an SEO system or keep it in-house? It depends on your resources and the cost-effectiveness of developing your own system, perhaps even the availability of qualified technical personnel. Only you can decide.

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By Paul J. Bruemmer 

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In this post, we mentioned the importance of understanding the basic search engine optimization (SEO) tasks (analysis, optimization, submission, and monitoring) and reviewed keyword-phrase analysis and content optimization.

Today, we’ll cover submissions and monitoring.

Submitting and Registering Your Site Correctly

Each search engine and directory has specific criteria and requirements when accepting a request to be listed in its database. For the best results, it is common professional practice to submit all URLs by hand.

Submission Software

Some people like to use submission software programs. If you do use them, it’s doubly important to comply with each search engine’s guidelines. When you submit your pages, you reveal your location and IP address to the engine or directory. So if you abuse the engine’s or directory’s submission guidelines, you may find your IP address blocked from future submissions.

Manual Submissions

Generally speaking, each engine or directory will post its “Add URL” instructions and links from the home page. You can drill in from there and follow the instructions as you go. You may want to create a bookmark for the specific “Add URL” page for future use.

Directories

Directories, such as Yahoo, LookSmart, and Open Directory Project, require hand submission because you have to select a category. Make this selection carefully so you end up in the best category.

Dynamically Generated Web Pages

Depending on the engine, when a Web site has dynamically generated Web pages, it is possible to identify several static pages. You’ll want to optimize and submit these pages carefully.

Search Engine Guidelines

It is important to carefully evaluate search engine guidelines prior to submitting, particularly if you have several pages to submit. Some engines may accept only five pages in a 24-hour period, whereas other engines may accept more or less. If you don’t comply with each engine’s specific guidelines, your pages may not get registered.

Confirm Registration

Once you have submitted your pages, it is necessary to confirm they have been registered. Each engine or directory will post a timeline as to when you can expect your URL to be registered and listed within the engine’s or directory’s database. Some engines and SEO technicians call this “indexing.” Some engines may index new pages in two weeks, others may index new pages in two months. Sometimes we’ve seen engines take up to six or eight months! As I’ve said before, an SEO campaign is a long-term project.

Page Query

After you have waited the allotted period of time, you must then query the engine or directory for your page(s). Doing this confirms your submission was successful and that your page or pages are in the engine or directory database. I call this process “registration” — you are now registered in the engine or directory. If, after the indexing period, you find that you are not registered, you must resubmit. But resubmit only after you have confirmed that you are not registered. There are penalties for mass submissions or oversubmitting.

Monitor and Audit

Most engines or directories allow you to search for a URL by typing in a search URL (e.g., mydomainname.com). This will allow you to view and monitor the page(s) you have submitted and registered. If you have a lot of pages, you may want to acquire software to monitor your submissions and registrations. Some software, such as TopDog and WebPosition, has a reporting feature that will allow you to monitor several pages more easily.

Audit Your Results

Once you have monitored your pages across all the engines and directories, you will essentially be auditing the results. The results will indicate that you should either resubmit (because the URL was not found), reoptimize (because the URL was not found in the top 30), or not take any action (because the page was found in the top 30).

When using software for monitoring, auditing, or reporting, be judicious. These tasks should not be performed more than once or twice per month. Automatic or automated software monitoring and reporting can draw undesired attention away from the engine, causing poor results.

Good Positioning Can Change

SEO is an ongoing process that does not end once you have achieved a favorable position. With AltaVista receiving more than 1 million page submissions per day, this makes for a volatile environment. Good positioning can change from month to month, and that’s why you need maintenance and recurring verification and resubmission.

Despite all the ups and downs of listing and positioning, once you’ve incorporated all four tasks correctly into your SEO campaign, you will have seeded search engines and directories to deliver qualified visitors deep into your preferred content areas, which can be very effective for traffic generation. Targeted visitors will land exactly where you want them — on your product and service pages or in your commerce areas. The end result is highly qualified leads. In fact, LookSmart quotes industry-leading conversion rates of 5 to 10 percent for its Subsite Listings.

We’ve had a few clients drop our positioning services, only to rejoin and get seeded in the engines again two weeks later because they didn’t like the effects on their bottom line. Others, who have taken the time and effort to audit their server-file logs before and after an SEO campaign, have reported anywhere from a 150 percent up to 600 percent increase in search engine traffic.

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By Paul J. Bruemmer 

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In this article we gave you a step-by-step plan for selecting the keywords and key phrases most likely to drive targeted traffic to your site. Here are some tips on avoiding keywords that are too common, using branded keywords, and knowing what to do when your keywords are likely to be misspelled. Finally, there’s a summary checklist to verify that you are on the right path to leading prequalified visitors to your web site.Do not use keywords or key phrases that are too broad. Use modifiers to make generic keywords and key phrases more specific. For example, if your site offers insurance-related services, you might want to use health insurance quotes or auto insurance quotes. To prequalify your visitors, your keywords and key phrases should identify your niche.

Let’s say you’re in the entertainment business. By choosing entertainment news, entertainment jobs, or entertainment center, you identify your niche and attract the kind of traffic you want. This is important no matter what you sell, be it apparel, books, health services, furniture, business services, or jewelry. A smaller, targeted audience is almost certain to result in more conversions than a large volume of traffic that got to your site thinking you were selling something you don’t!

Words such as software, Internet, cars, and radios are too general and will yield nothing but looky loos. But key phrases such as encrypted security software, Internet writing services, Ford Mustang two-door, and Bose wave AM/FM radio will attract visitors who are looking for exactly what you’re selling.

Not only that, single words and search engines don’t mix. Do you use single words in everyday situations when you need something? When you walk into a restaurant and the waiter asks what you’d like to eat, you dont just say, “Food.” Search engines can’t read your mind either and have a very tough time returning relevant search results on single-word searches. A searcher will get fed up with wading through hundreds of result pages to find an e-commerce software solution for his or her auction site. He or she won’t type in a search for software; it will be something like e-commerce auction software solution.

Do not use trademark names other than your own in your key phrases. If you are a start-up shooting for the top and decide to use a competitor’s name, watch out! Stay away from using other parties’ trademarks or product names in your key phrases. On the other hand, if you really do want the term Kelley Blue Book, contact Kelley and request permission. Whether you’ll be granted permission depends on potential affiliation. If you’re a vendor for a product, it’s quite possible the manufacturer will give you permission to use its name to promote and sell more product. However, trying to benefit from the use of another party’s trademark is disingenuous and will likely be met with significant resistance and legal exposure. Using another company’s trademark or product name to profit from its brand is totally unacceptable and breaches several federal trademark-protection laws.

If you are branded, include your company name in your key phrases. RadioShack, for example, should use key phrases such as RadioShack computers, RadioShack electronic components, RadioShack telephones, and so on. On the other hand, if RadioShack were interested in recruiting new employees, it should use key phrases such as work for RadioShack, RadioShack jobs nationwide, and executive RadioShack positions to recruit at specific levels of human resources. This way, RadioShack would be using its brand to find the very best people, people interested in working for RadioShack.

Remember that people misspell search words. A commonly used strategy that can be very effective is to select keywords and key phrases that incorporate likely misspellings. If you offer bookkeeping services, be sure to select bookeeping as one of your keywords and use this misspelling in some of your key phrases.

Following all the strategies covered this week and last should help point prequalified visitors to your web site. In summary, here’s your short list for developing your best key phrases:

• Try to think the way your potential customer thinks.
• Develop your keywords into a list of key phrases.
• Use concept key qualifiers to qualify visitors.
• Consider using special tools and services to help you discover your best key-phrase possibilities.
• Do not use keywords or key phrases that are too broad.
• Do not use trademark names other than your own in your key phrases.
• If you are branded, include your company name in your key phrases.
• Remember that people misspell search words, so select keywords and key phrases that include likely misspellings.

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By Paul J. Bruemmer

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In Part 1, we said that the SEO industry is at a crossroads. I suggested that the path we in the SEO industry are taking is precarious. I harped on the lack of uniformity with regard to doorway pages as a case in point. This lack of uniformity is not only confusing prospective SEO clients but also turning them off. Finally, I suggested that a way to address this problem is for the SEO industry to adopt industry standards.

Standards provide both stability and continuity. Doorway pages, for example, would be essentially the same at company A as they would be at company B, and that uniformity would make things work both for consumers and for SEO firms.

Here’s why.

Not only do standards foster clarity, they also impart credibility. To illustrate the clarity that standards could bring, let’s juxtapose an industry with standards against the current situation. Imagine that you’re a dot-com looking for an online advertising vehicle that works. You investigate SEO firms. Here’s some of what you’d have to deal with.

SEO firm A has a positioning guarantee; SEO firm B says guarantees aren’t feasible because search engine algorithms are constantly changing, and it furthermore cautions about the legitimacy of SEO firms that offer guarantees.

Let’s look at pricing. SEO firm C charges for its services by the month. Firm D charges $300 for every Top 10 ranking. Firm E charges only for “competitive” terms that get a Top 20. Daunting, isn’t it?

Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’

We’re not making it easy for consumers to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Not only that, I’d suggest that there’s so much conflicting information, we’re inadvertently engendering cynicism in the very group we’re trying to solicit.

Standards will bring the kind of uniformity you’d expect from any other industry.

Look at it this way. If you’re in the market for a car, you know that the major manufacturers mean essentially the same thing when they say they offer cruise control. But what if every manufacturer’s concept of cruise control were totally different? Imagine that they all had different pricing structures, and some offered cruise-control guarantees, while those that didn’t scoffed at those that did.

This kind of disparity may cause you to forsake cruise control entirely.

Unlike the automobile industry, SEO is relatively new and is fighting for mainstream acceptance. It’s crucial that we engender confidence and credibility now.

The Standards Dilemma

Setting standards isn’t a new idea. Nor is it without controversy.

Eons ago in Internet time (1998), Danny Sullivan, perhaps the web’s most authoritative voice on SEO, wrote a piece in which he discussed problems in the industry that precipitated a call for standards.

In “Promoters Call for Certification,” Sullivan reported how some key players called for the “establishment of a certification program for optimization professionals.” Proponents of the program felt that standards would help distinguish between relevant, ethical doorway pages and doorways that abused the system.

While Sullivan allows that “there are still some types of standards and common ground that can be formed,” he has some concerns about the idea of industry standards — in this case, as they pertain to doorways.

“Standards don’t solve the underlying problem — as soon as you have 11 people vying for 10 top spots, they’ll fight among themselves and constantly rejigger their pages within whatever ’standards’ someone sets up… So they’ll go back and rework their pages, albeit within the ‘rules,’ to secure a better placement. Thus, they’ll go back and rework their own pages, putting the cycle into a constant loop.”

Rules Worth Playing By

Not surprisingly, Danny’s right when he points out that this system isn’t perfect. It may appear a bit stifling if everyone plays within the rules.

But let me propose this: The SEO firms that succeed are the ones that find ways to make playing by the rules work. Can you show me an industry whose players don’t bend the rules (without breaking them) in an attempt to get the best results for their clients? Danny’s “constant loop” may be a way for us to encourage innovation.

Adopting standards may well ruffle a few feathers — just ask Al Gore’s attorneys. In effect, Gore lost the keys to the White House because 5 of the 9 Supreme Court justices couldn’t reconcile with the idea of a recount without uniform standards. How do you discern voter intent without uniform criteria?

Standards could also help us tackle an insidious situation.

The truth is, the SEO industry is quietly suffering from an image problem. Am I suggesting that SEO isn’t effective and, therefore, has a bad reputation? Absolutely not.

Consider this. Someone goes to AltaVista. He enters “buy CD changer” in the search field. If he lands on your site because you have a high ranking, you have a visitor who knows exactly what he wants — and he wants to convert. Also note: This prospect wasn’t solicited by a banner or email that implored him to click through. He deliberately went looking for your goods or services.

I’m convinced there’s no better way to drive qualified traffic.

Changing Minds, Opening Doors

People’s perceptions of the SEO industry are being shaped not because of the product itself but because of the issues surrounding the product. I also think that our image problem is exacerbated by the industry’s organic growth, which has resulted in a lack of industry-wide uniformity.

So, how do we change the perception that the SEO industry is esoteric?

Standards could provide the infrastructure for assisting prospects to make informed decisions. Armed with standardized information, prospective SEO consumers would be able to sift through various SEO firms, make apples-to-apples comparisons, and choose the firms that best suit their needs.

The stability that standards foster implicitly validates SEO strategy. The perception is that if all the SEO firms are all playing by the same basic rules, they must be doing it right.

Making clear and consistent information about SEO more accessible to our target empowers our prospects. Standards can help facilitate this empowerment process.

We don’t have to change the product, we have to reposition the brand. If that happens, doors will open.

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Sid Herberman is the President of Optimize-This.com, a search engine optimization (SEO) firm that believes online businesses really can achieve ROI. Prior to specializing in SEO, Sid was the Online Marketing Manager of LOUDtunes.com/MyMusicFactory.com, a B2C turned B2B e-commerce solutions provider. Sid is a former ad agency copywriter and sometimes enjoys writing articles that challenge the status quo. 

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As the number of sites proliferates — currently about 300,000 home pages are added to the web each week — and more and more people go online to shop for services or goods, the importance of search engine optimization increases. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t work anymore; “launch it and promote it” is the name of the game.

Knowing what words and phrases people use to search the web is the first step in conducting a search engine optimization campaign. The benefit of a well-executed search engine optimization campaign is that it will increase the chances that members of your target audience will find your site. Choose the right keywords and phrases, and you’ll receive prequalified visitors. Choose the wrong ones, and people who want what you’re offering won’t find you.

Here’s a step-by-step plan to determine the keywords and phrases most likely to drive targeted traffic to your site.

Try to think the way your potential customer thinks. What words will pop into your potential customer’s mind when he or she is conducting a search for your offering? Here’s a tip: Take a step back from your product, service, or home page, and think like the average Jack or Jill who wants to find what you’re offering but doesn’t know about your site. Relax, concentrate, and quickly generate as many keywords as you can without worrying about whether they’re right. Approach it like a free-association exercise, and get your brand managers, marketing vice presidents, CEOs, and frontline salespeople to do the same.

Once you’ve listed everything that remotely comes to mind, prioritize and edit this list. Drop any words that don’t fit, and add those that pop up. Then shave this list down to the top 150 keywords your target audience will use to find what you do best.

Develop your keywords into a list of key phrases. If the keyword broadband is appropriate for your site, select key phrases, such as digital broadband, wireless broadband, accelerated for broadband, broadband news, broadband wireless communication, and so on.

Combine your keywords and key phrases with additional qualifiers to create more specific terms. Create two-, three-, and four-word phrases. For instance, from the key phrase software solutions, you might create traffic analysis software solutions, B2B software solutions, e-commerce software solutions, and so on. You get the picture.

Use concept key qualifiers to qualify visitors. Specify the concept in your key phrases, such as e-commerce software, but also be specific enough so that the key phrase is not too broad. You might want to use e-commerce software solutions, e-commerce security solutions, business-to-business e-commerce software, or B2B e-commerce software.

Beyond Engineering’s WordSpot is a tool for helping you discover your best key phrase possibilities. It can help you monitor and prioritize key phrases that people search for on the Internet.

The tool lets you analyze which key phrases people are looking for on the web. This research can provide you with knowledge about which words relevant to your situation are the best to promote or optimize.

Next week, we’ll talk about using branded keywords, avoiding common keywords, knowing what to do when your keywords are frequently misspelled, and more.

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 By Paul J. Bruemmer

• 2 Comments

If you want to drive a nail into a piece of wood, you reach for a hammer, not a screwdriver. In other words, use the right tool, and you’ll get the right results. And the same holds true for search engines.

General-purpose search engines are wonderful tools. You can search for entertainment, news, sports, company, and many other types of information and most often find what you are looking for. Like a Swiss Army knife, general-purpose search engines can do many different jobs. Nevertheless, your results might be better if you turned to a vertical tool.

And this may just be the year that general-purpose search engines finally figure out a way to get the right vertical tools into the hands of their users. They’ve tried before, but some new efforts might succeed where other efforts have failed in the past.

For some time, general-purpose search engines have offered their own vertical tools to fulfill particular types of searches. For example, do a search on AltaVista, and the results page has little tabs above the search box intended to direct you to the proper search database, such as shopping search, images search, and news search.

In 1998, Lycos had a drop-down option right next to its search box so that you could choose from 11 different types of search options, including weather and stock quotes. At iWon, there are currently four different search choices below the search box on the home page.

The problem with vertical tools is that search engine users generally bypass all options and go directly to the main search box, as if a black hole were pulling them in against their will. For the most part, they don’t make use of selections in drop-down boxes or links to vertical search tools, when presented.

But if you give users too many options, they can feel overwhelmed. I think it was someone from Inktomi who once called this “death by a million search boxes,” or, as I like to paraphrase, “being search-boxed to death.” After all, how can search engines offer specialty search options without those options being ignored or, worse yet, considered clutter that gets in the way of the “real” results? Well, following some examples of what has worked and what hasn’t is a good place to start.

What to Avoid

For starters, let’s take AltaVista, whose home page was recently simplified and attracted praise for returning to its “pure” search roots.

But our memories are short. For AltaVista’s last major face-lift (in July 2000) was expressly touted by the service as having been designed to show AltaVista’s recommitment to search.

The Cleaner the Better

The big problem with AltaVista last year was that it overloaded its home page. There were so many links that it certainly didn’t look like a search engine. And it’s no surprise that it was praised as a search engine once again, soon after it eliminated the clutter. (Even though nothing had changed under the hood!)

I’d also like to see more of the vertical search services offered by the major general-purpose search engines made available through standalone Web sites. This makes it easier to direct people who specifically want these types of services. For example, need image searching? No problem — go to http://images.altavista.com. That’s much easier than saying, “Well, do a search, then look for wherever the images tab has moved to this week on the AltaVista results page, then click on that to get image results.”

Integrate Referral Links

What about the majority of searchers who still walk the same familiar road to the main search box? Well, AltaVista’s now experimenting with integrating referral links directly into the search results in a way that I hope other search engines will try.

Search for “DVD players” at AltaVista, and you’ll see that the first link above the numbered results says, “Compare Prices and Features on DVD Players” and leads to its shopping area. Now, the shopping search could be improved, but at least it is relevant to suggest visiting the shopping area for this type of search. Moreover, users are probably more likely to follow links that are in the main results list, like this link, rather than scattered elsewhere on the page.

Conduct Market Testing

AltaVista’s market testing backs this up. It tested both the “Consumer Electronics” link that you’ll also see on the results page versus the “Compare Prices” link that I’ve described. Testing results showed that since the Compare Prices link looks like a regular listing, usage was more likely.

According to Giguiere, “The results have been tremendous. Forty-four percent said they would click on the Compare Prices link, and only 17 percent said they would click on the other.”

The Holy Grail for Search Engines

The real Holy Grail for search engines is to detect the type of search we are doing and feed out more targeted results from appropriate databases. Search for a current news topic, and it may be that the majority of the main results will be pulled from the news database automatically, rather than from the main Web index.

We’re not there yet, but the idea appears to be moving forward. Consider last September when AltaVista announced it was going to be a “third generation” search engine. It was this automatic blending of vertical and regular search results that AltaVista was referring to. And the first delivery on the promise came last month with the integration of shopping links. And more vertical links are coming, with news being the next in line.

But there are two things to fear from the blending that’s underway. First, the search engine may not always correctly guess when we want results from a specialty search source — or it may select the wrong one. Fine-tuning and offering guidance on the results page, within the main listings area, should help.

Second, search engines may try to provide too many vertical links that redirect into their own content areas or to partner sites rather than to what we really want. Users will still appreciate some variety in their results, and if all routes lead into “walled garden” areas that the search engines operate or have a stake in, then their users may seek less controlling resources.

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By Danny Sullivan 

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