Dive Bomber Opening for WWE Star Christy Hemme

Ok, please be forewarned that this post has nothing to do with SEO...lol. I am very stoked to announce that this Wednesday night, April 2nd, my band Dive Bomber will be opening for WWE Superstar Christy Hemme.

Here is a pic of Christy in case you are unfamiliar with her career. And if you are really interested (and over 18..lol), here are some Christy Hemme videos.

I checked out her band on MySpace and they rock. Needless to say, we are excited to share the stage with such an accomplished performer. Hopefully she won't decide to body slam me off the stage if I accidently get in her way...lol. So if you are in San Diego this Wed, we will be starting the party around 9pm at Brick by Brick.

If you don't see me on Twitter until noon on Thursday, you'll know why ;)

Have a great week.

Catfish

Meta Descriptions Still Very Important for SEO

Today I was reading an outstanding article about Meta Descriptions by Barry Welford and I thought I would share a couple more thoughts I have on the subject. In Barry's article he mentions about the importance that description tags play in creating the snippets that the search engines display in the SERPs (search engine results pages). And he elaborates on the importance of placing your most important keywords in the description because the snippets are drawn from the text surrounding those keywords in the Meta description. The other thing I thought was worth adding to this part of the conversation is that the Meta Description is a great place to put your competitive advantage statement. In other words, tell people why they should click your link versus your competition. It could be "Free Shipping", it could be "Since 1970" (meaning you have a track record of success), it could be "Exclusive Pricing" or whatever you have as a competitive advantage. Communicating that value statement in your Meta description tag will increase your click through rate (although you won't always be able to fully control the messaging of your search result listing because they vary based on the search query).

Another comment I thought was important to make about the description tag is that before Google removed the Supplemental results tag, one of the most effective methods for getting pages out of the supplemental results was to ensure that it had a unique Meta description. We found numerous cases of pages that were in supplemental results that had no Meta description. Once we added to the unique description to these pages, the majority of them escaped the supplemental results and even more importantly, we saw dramatic traffic increases for these pages coming from organic search. Couple this with Barry's observation that pages with no or short Meta descriptions are flagged in Google Webmaster tools, and it is fairly apparent that unique Meta descriptions are of utmost importance to your SEO campaign.

One of the areas though that Barry and I disagree about descriptions however is the length of the description tag. Confining the length of your description to the 155 character limitation in Google in my opinion is not good for search engines nor is it good for your long tail keyword targeting. I'm not saying that every description should exceed 155 characters, but I don't believe truncating the description of a page to fit into a screen character limitation is best practices for a tag that is supposed to be primarily to communicate information. Part of Google's algorithm is based on Latent Semantic Analysis, so the more contextual information that is available to the engine, the better able it is to correctly rank your Web page for relevant keywords.

Take for example the following description that is less than 155 characters:

The BusinessOnLine SEO blog covers the latest tips, techniques and news in world of search engine optimization. (112 characters)

It's not bad and has some pretty good keywords. But if you add the next sentence which pushes the description over the 155 limit, you get a lot more information for the search engines to make ranking decisions with:

Authors Ray "Catfish" Comstock and Benj Arriola discuss topics like 301 / 302 redirects, link building, on page optimization, usability, online marketing ideas and other current SEO issues. (301 characters total for both sentences)

I usually make my descriptions about two sentences because it has been my experience that you can communicate quite a lot of information in two sentences, both from a keyword perspective, and a competitive advantage standpoint. The marginal value of each sentence after that usually doesn't justify the energy to create it although you might find exceptions. And while the control over the messaging isn't as standardized across relevant keywords as it would be with a shorter description, you increase the amount of opportunity to rank better for a number of long tail keywords. But more importantly, you communicated more USEFUL information through the Meta tag (assuming your doing it right and not spamming)which is it's primary function, regardless of the search engine's display constraints.

But my disagreement with Barry over this one point doesn't take away from what I think is an outstanding article. I think that's what makes SEO so interesting, is the different philosophical approaches that various people take to things like Meta tags, redirects, nofollow tags, paid links, etc. Have a great week.

Catfish

Enterprise Level SEO - 5 Reasons Why SEO for Big Companies is Different

One the best parts about the last three years of working here at BusinessOnLine is that I have had the opportunity to work on numerous projects for large enterprise level clients, some of whom are Fortune 500 companies. And I thought it would interesting to compare the experiences I have had with those projects and how they differ from my experience with smaller clients. Keep in mind that this list is from an SEO engineering perspective. It doesn't take into account the differences in the sales cycle or the project management responsibilities.

Here is my top 5 list of differences in the SEO process for enterprise level clients:

1) Number of Stakeholders
It has been my experience with smaller businesses that there are generally only one or two (possibly three) stakeholders in a project. In other words, if those two or three people decide that your suggested SEO strategy is valid, it gets implemented. In larger corporations, there might be several different stakeholders that need to understand and buy off on your suggestions. Often times this can mean having to speak to a large number of people with a Power Point presentation as to why you are recommending the changes, what their effect will be and if applicable, how to do the changes. Sometimes it might mean doing more than one meeting. I have seen situations where the Internet marketing team and content management team have both agreed to suggestions only to have the IT team push back at a later date. And then another meeting is need with the IT team in order to clarify suggestions. I have also seen it where the content management team is opposed to using certain keywords because of branding considerations. These types of scenarios are much more common in an enterprise level engagement and will sometimes require a little more preparation on your part (like a Power Point presenation for example).

2) Technical Limitations
Eliminating SEO problems from CMS systems is a common for both big and small business. But most small businesses use 3rd party CMS software platforms. Most of those systems by now have SEO modules that you can add to them to make them more SEO friendly. Although I still think Oracle is one of the most problematic but that's a conversation for another day. With enterprise level clients, it is not uncommon that they have their own proprietary CMS system. So that extends the learning curve versus if someone is using Drupal or even Wordpress, which you might already be familiar with. Additionally, your timeline may be affected by the fact that your suggested SEO modifications to their CMS system can be implemented, but it will take a couple months to get the code pushed. These are the kinds of variables that are more common with enterprise level clients. These are also the kind of variables that require more time investment from the SEO engineer's perspective.

3) Ability to Directly Implement Suggested Changes
One of the biggest differences between enterprise level clients and smaller clients is your ability to directly interface with the Web site. It is very common with smaller businesses to be given FTP access so that you can use Dreamweaver or a similar Web design program to implement new title tags, Meta tags, content edits, and other SEO recommendations.

With larger clients, these changes usually need to be put into a document like an Excel spreadsheet and delivered to the client who then implements your suggestions. An audit it needed afterward to ensure that everything has been changed correctly. Creating these deliverables in a presentable fashion that is consistent with your company brand imaging is no small task when you have never done it before.

4) Time Frame of Implementation
With smaller companies, there aren't usually that many hurdles (except the IT team guy's quirky schedule) that get in the way of implementing SEO changes once they have been agreed upon. With enterprise level clients however, it is more common to have to work around code pushes or scheduled release dates. This obviously affects the overall timeline of the SEO campaign. It's important to identify these issues in the beginning of an SEO engagement to schedule work efficiently and set expectations accordingly.

5) Number of Meetings
Other than #3, I think this is one of the biggest differences between big and small companies. The sheer amount of communication that needs to happen in order to get your teams moving in the right direction. By teams I am refering to your own internal team as well as the client team. With large projects comes a large work load that is usually handled by a team of experts. Coordinating those team members takes management skills that are not needed with smaller engagements. Additionally, coordinating the education of the various client stakeholders, the actual implementation of SEO recommendations and the results of that implementation, typically requires more meeting time than with one or two decision makers in a small company. If for no other reason than the number of questions that people have about the process.

I hope that illustrates some of the challenges that SEO professionals face with large enterprise clients that are not as common with smaller companies.

Lyrics to the SEO Blues

For those who were curious:

The SEO Blues (© Copyright 2008)
Lyrics by Catfish




It was Monday morning and I was just out of bed
Logged onto Hitbox just to see if I had
Any reason to be happy that day
Cause ya never know what Googles gonna take away
(I got the)

Chorus:
SEO Blues
The SEO Blues
The SEO Blues
Another Google Dance is all ya need to wake up to
SEO Blues

Number one the first day and you're gone the next
Trying to run a business man is such a mess
Page Rank, Back links, 302s
I already had enough to do (without the)

Chorus

I'm sinkin in the sandbox cause I got no links
I talked to Rand Fishkin just to see what he thinks
I talked to Matt Cutts and Shoemoney too
Not even Greg Boser knew what I should do (about my)

Chorus

It seems I had a problem that I couldn't understand
Until I read an article at search engine land
My site got hijacked by my own IP
And a 302 redirect I couldn't see (I had the)

Chorus

PS. This is purely a fictional story ;)

The SEO Blues - Free MP3 Music Download by Catfish

During the last 10 years of optimizing sites, I have come across a lot of circumstances that could only be described as "The SEO Blues". *lol* So I finally decided to write a song about it. It's called The SEO Blues. Everyday on my lunch I go to my band studio to eat and relax. Fortunately it's only about 10 minutes from work. I wrote this song over the last couple weeks and today I decided to record it on my iPod. There are a couple mistakes on the guitar but I only had time for one take. I hope everyone enjoys it. I think its kinda funny. I am sure many people can relate to the theme. *LOL* Just click on the player below to listen to the song or download the SEO Blues mp3 file. Maybe someday I'll do a video ;)




Download The SEO Blues

Top 5 Ways American Express is Losing Money on SEO

So before I slam American Express today for being clueless (stay tuned), let me recap my awesome weekend. Although I couldn't play flag football this last weekend because of my elbow injury, I coached our squad (The Vultures) to an opening day 29 - 6 throttling of team Havoc. We are now 1 - 0 in our second season in A League of the San Diego Men's Flag Football League :)

Additionally, my band Dive Bomber won our first round of the Emergenza Battle of the Bands and we are moving on to round 2. Not bad for a band that doesn't have a vocalist, although we did finally find one, but he hasn't performed with us yet.

Ok, so now that I have bragged a little about how cool my weekend was, let's look at the ridiculous SEO advice that American Express (who last I checked was a credit card company..lol) is distributing to people. Today I was doing a little reading at WebProNews and I read this story about American Express and their small business handbook in which they claim:

"Finally, don’t waste money on so-called Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) specialists. Search engines are very quick to penalize sites that try to trick their filtering techniques, and once your site has been put on Google’s blacklist, it will take forever to get off."

Well since I am a search engine specialist myself who typically deals with companies of this magnitude, I thought I would evaluate their laughable and myopic advice by looking at their site and pointing out how they could greatly increase their organic traffic by adhering to search engine best practices, which clearly they do not. The funniest thing about this exercise is to see all the money that they are losing by turning a blind eye to SEO. I wonder if their shareholders would be impressed.

Anyway, here are the top 5 ways they are blowing it. If anyone from AMEX is reading this, you gotta pay for the rest of my observations if ya want em...lol. So without further ado:

1) Really lame page titles.

Page titles are extremely important in organic search. Probably the most heavily weighted on page factor in my opinion. Lets take a look and see how AMEX is doing with Page Titles:

Homepage:
"American Express Credit Cards, Business Services, and Travel Services"

Not bad really. Top 10 in Google for Travel Services. Nowhere to be found on Business Services. Pretty generic keywords really and not very strong calls to action but overall, I could live with this title. Not having "credit cards" in the Meta description though is a boo boo :)

Travel Page:
"American Express - Travel"

You're joking right? LOL. I mean, at LEAST include the word services. There is so much lost opportunity here its amazing. I would be really surprised if being on Page 8 in Google get you any traffic for the word "travel". Furthermore, there are so many other permutations that are more targeted that would be easier to get:

travel resources
travel packages
travel deals
business travel (** they are #8 for this term on a PR5 page, not the main travel URL which is a PR8. How high could they rank if they added this phrase into their main travel page? It's prolly a waste of money to find out).

I could do this same exercise on many of their pages with the same result. Too much opportunity left on the table because of poor page titles.

2) Bad URLs (and Javascript links)

Click on the "Car Rental Insurance" link on the left navigation and you will be taken to a URL that looks like this:

https://www212.americanexpress.com/dsmlive/dsm/dom/us/en/feefreeservices/pages/carrentallossdamagei
nsurance_allccsg_shareddetails.do?vgnextoid=063a9501c3a0e010VgnVCM20000012b3ad9
4RCRD&vgnextchannel=3c830da9846dd010VgnVCM10000084b3ad9
4RCRD&name=carrentallossdamageinsurance_allccsg_shareddetails&type=intBenefitDetail

Ok first of all, this URL is never gonna get indexed consistently because it is WAY too long with too many parameters. It currently doesn't exist in Google. Second, even if the URL was clean, the link is made in javascript so the engines can't see it which means no Page Rank gets to the page from that link. Essentially, this content has no opportunity to get ranked in search engines. I wonder how much money it would be worth to AMEX to get listed for the term "car rental insurance".......

3) This one is my favorite: (from the source code of the personal cards page)
https://www143.americanexpress.com/cards/home.do#PILLARS/0



As if replacing an image with text is going to "optimize search engine results". Nice use of the comment tag though..lol.

This isn't one of their bigger issues, I just found it REALLY amusing.

4) Flash. Same page. It was hard to look at the text cache of this page because the text version calls some other URL that Google doesn't have indexed which means you have about 1 sec to look at the cache before the redirect to the Google error page. However, thanks to my quick guitar playing fingers, I was able to get a screen shot of the page:

http://www.businessol.com/images/seo-blog/amex-screenshot.jpg



Compare this with the content appears on the page in the normal browser window courtesy of the FLASH, and you can see a big difference. There are a lot of places on this site where content is hidden from search engines in Flash. It makes you wonder how much organic traffic this issue is taking away from AMEX (and how much that traffic might be worth).

5) ALT Tags. A link is a vote. Its a vote from Page A (the page with the link) that Page B (the page being linked to) is relevant for whatever keywords appear in the anchor text. When an image is a link, ALT text is used to convey keyword relevancy instead of anchor text. When there is no ALT tag, no keyword relevancy is conveyed and therefore there is lost opportunity. One of the most important ALT tags is the one that appears on your homepage logo because it serves as a vote for your homepage from EVERY page on your site. Therefore, it's crucial to have a good ALT tag. A good general rule of thumb is to make it roughly equivalent to your homepage title. If we look at that same personal cards page, we can see that the ALT tag reads "American Express Home". Think about what that ALT tag could do for the keywords "credit card", "business services" and "travel services" if those phrases had been included in the homepage ALT tag. I wonder how much money that is.....

And that's just the top 5. One of the biggest problems with SEO is the amount of bad information that is being thrown around by unqualified "experts". Both in and outside the industry. The truth is, there are good SEO companies and bad ones. The bad ones try to use algorithmic loopholes to trick search engines into ranking a site higher than it should. The good ones have an understanding of search engine best practices and try to maximize a site's inherent values while offering a strategic vision on how to improve those values through better usability, better content and better design. Not understanding the difference between the two shows a lack of knowledge on the subject. And that's exactly what AMEX is doing with their recommendations.

That's all for today. Hopefully someone over at AMEX will get a clue and offer a more sophisticated approach to SEO for their Business Gold Rewards Card program. Because being ignorant is not much of a reward ;)

Yahoo Pushes Usability Closer to SEO

Today I decided to visit some SEO blogs that I hadn't really had the opportunity to read for a while. One of my forgotten favorites is the SEO by the Sea blog written by Bill Slawski. Bill wrote a great article on a new Yahoo patent that attempts to measure a page's usability and use that measurement in the overall ranking of Web sites. Without trying to say I told you so (even though I did..lol ;), I did say in my first post of the year that, "I really think that 2008 is going to be the year that you see the study of Web site Usability move to the forefront of Search Engine Optimization." And I believe that this is another important step that moves us in that direction.

If you read this patent, it really is all about determining whether or not the page is "cluttered" and how that might affect usability. Certainly the study of usability encompasses much more than just how cluttered a page is. But I believe more and more of these types of mathematical models that quantify known relationships between measurable data and user experience will continue to evolve. And rather than trying to reverse engineer each one of them as SEO people like myself are prone to do, it makes more sense just to focus on building the best possible site with the user in mind at all times.

The good news of patents like this one is that going forward, Web sites that are user focused will be rewarded as it relates to their search engine rankings. As search engines develop more sophisticated algorithms that bring more continuity between SEO and Usability, good usability will be directly attributable to high search rankings. SEO professionals at all levels will have to pay more attention to usability which should have a very positive effective on the overall quality of optimized Web sites. And that will only increase the value of SEO services and the community as a whole. So if you are an SEO, now is the time to start studying good usability principles!

It makes me feel very lucky to work with a team of usability experts who can answer my questions. :)

Have a great week.

Catfish

Google Wins Again - ASK is History

OK so maybe not history, but if you read this article about ASK changing their business model to appeal to married women, it's pretty clear that they have raised the white flag and given up competing with Google. It's actually a smart move as they are focusing more on their core user group. But it now makes the MSN / YAHOO deal all that much more interesting. Personally, as much as I love Google, I don't believe that this news, or a potential MSN/Yahoo deal is good for SEO professionals. What Google needs is more competition and not less. Unfortunately, no other companies are in a position to compete with them at this time. Certainly not Yahoo or MSN. Even if they do merge these two still won't be able to produce a better product. Their corporate cultures can't compete. How can putting two sub standard technologies together make one that is better than the leader? It can't. And it won't. So as ASK fades into the distance as Altavista once did, it makes Google seem that much more important to anyone looking to drive significant traffic to their Web site via organic search.

8 Rules of Directory Submissions for SEO and Link Building

Recently a client of mine expressed reservation about submitting to search engine directories as a way to increase link popularity. They were concerned that a directory listing would look like a paid link to Google and that their listing would be seen as spam. That got me to thinking about all the misinformation on the Internet today about link building in general and paid links. So I thought a blog post on the subject might help some people who were confused about this issue.

One common thing I see all the time in SEO forums from people who disagree with Google's stance on paid links is, why is a directory listing not a paid link given that Google doesn't approve of paid listings. And the answer is simple. If you buy a link from a Web site, there is no trusted editorial review of the link for relevancy. In other words, the money you accepted was for the purposes of publishing a link. With a high quality directory, the money you pay is not for a listing, it is for an editor to take the time to see if the quality of your site is high enough to be included in the directory and whether it is relevant to the specified topic. You may think I am splitting hairs here but the difference is significant. The value of the directory for Google is that there has been a human review of the site. Directories which accept all submissions, regardless of quality, will at some point carry less weight if any. The discretionary nature of a good directory, is the reason that Google counts directory links in its algorithm.

If you have any doubts that it is ok to submit your site to high quality Web directories, here is a quote from Google Webmaster Guidelines that may help to put your mind at ease:
"Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!, as well as to other industry-specific expert sites."

So there it is straight from the horse's mouth. But obviously there are A LOT of directories out there. How do you know which ones to choose and which ones to avoid? Here is a checklist of items I have put together to help you weed out the directories of lesser value:

1) Make sure the directory has an editorial oversight process and that not all sites are accepted.

2) Make sure that the site's categories only contain high quality relevant sites. If there is a Viagra site in the Las Vegas section of the directory, move on.

3) Make sure that the site isn't link spamming in the footer. If everypage of the directory has links to "online gambling", "tax return software", etc., you know that the purpose of this directory is to link spam.

4) Make sure that the page where your listing will be is indexed in the search engines, especially Google. Having a link doesn't help your SEO if the engines can't see it. Checking to see if the page has Page Rank is a decent first step, but I would also make sure it's cached in Google and Yahoo and I would also look to see that sites already listed on the page show it as a link in Yahoo Site Explorer.

5) Make sure your listing doesn't appear on a page with over 100 other links. I know the 100 link thing isn't totally accurate and that it is more based on the size of the document in terms of what gets indexed and what doesn't, but after 100 links, your not getting that much Page Rank and the amount of user traffic from the link will probably be non existant. The same is true usually if your found on page 3 or more of a given category. Try to submit to categories that have less competition. There are always exceptions based on how important or thematically relevant a directory might be, but as a general rule, stay out of crowded pages and try to stay as close to the top level as you can.

6) Submit to directories that might actually provide targeted traffic and give you an ROI from your submission fee (ie, "industry-specific expert sites").

7) Make sure that directories ony comprose a small portion of your backlink profile. In other words, don't overdo it. If you are relying on directory submissions alone to get you into the top 10 for competitive keywords, you are going to be disappointed. Directory submissions are the foundation and easiest way to start a link building campaign, but they are only the beginning.

8) Make sure that the directories don't have rel=nofollow on the links or that the pages have not been blocked from search. A prime example of this is www.thomasnet.com which is a very big and famous directory of industrial manufacturers. At some point, they have added a no index, no follow meta tag to all their pages. So the links to manufacturers from this site will not count in Google's link scoring even though they show up as links in Yahoo Site Explorer.

A good way to test that quickly is to install this firefox extenstion:
SEO Firefox Plugin
This will allow your browser to automatically highlight links that have rel=nofollow.

Here are some of my favorite all purpose directories:

www.dmoz.org
www.yahoo.com
www.business.com
www.botw.org
www.joeant.com
www.stpt.com/directory/

I hope this helps some people find their way through the sometimes confusing subject of directory submissions. And hopefully save you a little money from purchasing unwisely ;)

Have a great week. :)

Catfish