No follow tag on Blog comments- Throwing the baby out with the bath water?

I guess a lot of people have probably noticed that most of the major bogging platforms are now adding the no follow tag automatically to all links in the comment sections of blogs. The Theory is that this will prevent comment spamming as gaining a link in the comment section will have no SEO benefit. Seems like a good plan on the face of it but did anyone stop to think about all the good quality comments which do actually link to other relevant blogs? Is this not how search engines discover and rank these new blogs? In my opinion by not allowing comment links to be indexed a lot of great blogs will never be discovered. Also on a side note Yahoo still seems to follow and index these links even if it doesn’t transfer any web rank.

I guess the most sensible way of dealing with the spam would have been to force people to moderate their comments. Ah well talk about using a sledge hammer to crack an egg!

Google Adwords goes demographic!

Google has announced that it will be carrying out a Beta test on demographic targeting for Adwords. This will allow advertisers to target people by basic demographics such as age and sex. The test is only taking place on the content network to begin with. I am guessing Google will use sites that make people login and provide demographic information to begin with, Facebook would be an obvious starting point.

Could this test lead to demographic targeting in search results?

Although some doubt it, I firmly believe that demographic targeting will soon be available for search network ads. Google could collect demographic data through services such as G-mail and as the user stays logged in when searching. The search results and the Adwords adverts down the left hand side would then be affected by the data gathered on that person’s login. The I Google service is a further indication of Google eventual intention to do this.

Although this kind of targeting is great from a commercial point of view on a personal level it is quite scary. Although in theory the search results will be better suited to you. Does anyone really like the idea of a company being able to gather that kind of information on you?

6 Tips For Improving Conversion Rates On Your Web Sites Forms

We have all seen Analytics reports where 30 people reach the contact form and no one completes it. It must be fairly safe to assume that the people who clicked through to the form were interested, so why do so few fill out the form? This post will give you some of the ways I have discovered to improve web form conversion rates.

1) Remind people why they were going to fill out the form in the first place.
Ever walked into a room and forgotten why you went in there? People surfing the net do it all the time on web pages, prospects have a very short memory once they reach the contact form: they have often partially forgotten the great sales pitch which took them there in the first place. So you need to remind them on the contact us page. For example, if you offer a money back guarantee or if this price is for today only and they need to complete the form today to get the price, tell them next to the contact form. Don’t let them forget why they went to the page in the first place.
2) Don’t ask for too much information
If you are one of the kind hearted souls that answers market research phone calls and participates in the surveys to enter a prize draw, try and think about how you feel when the survey that was supposed to take two minutes begins to run on. Imagine this feeling and times it by ten. This is how people feel with web forms. Most calls to action refer to forms as being “simple” or “quick” so when the prospect sees twenty fields to complete, it not only affects how much they trust you, but also leaves them feeling angry and frustrated. Even if they start the form like the market research survey, they will probably get frustrated and give up half way through. Try to remember, if the form is for lead generation ask the prospect for the minimal information you need to move to the next stage of the sale. Sales men are more than capable of finding out the other information from a prospect: don’t try and replace them with a web form.
3) Make sure the person has the options they need
If you use a drop down menu on a form to save the prospect time, great, but you need to make sure this form has all the possible answers on it or at least a section for “other” if the list would be huge. For example many companies have a section for status, which in my opinion is a fairly pointless question from a sales point of view in most cases. Anyway, often the status options are married or single, now how many people are neither married nor single? There is a whole chunk of the population with boyfriends and girlfriends. These people will be annoyed by the fact there is no option for them. It makes it look like your company is not set up to cater for them.
4) Don’t distract the prospect
Once you’ve got someone to the contact form don’t distract him or her. Why would you put unrelated special offers and adverts on the contact form? It just encourages your prospect to visit these instead of completing the form.
5) Reassure the prospect
People’s personal information matters to them. Make a commitment not to share it with others or Spam them. Try and take the fear factor out of the prospect giving you their details.
6) The double bump factor: don’t make it difficult
In retail shopping there exists a phenomenon know as “the double bump factor” (this is reported in Why We Buy – The Science of Shopping by Paco Underhill.) The basics of this is that if someone is looking for something and they get bumped or forced to move twice they become frustrated and abandon what they were trying to look for. The same thing occurs on web forms if the prospect’s form is rejected twice they will in the majority of instances give up. So check your logs to see how many form errors you are getting. Many people could be giving up just because your form is hard work.

I hope you have found this post useful. This post was inspired by an article at http://www.grokdotcom.com blog these guys really know their conversion science stuff so I recommend you take a look.

How to Choose The Best Paid Links

The first thing I should point out in this post, is that buying links for SEO purposes is against Google’s web master guidelines and so if you do decide to buy links for this purpose there is a risk involved. Google is not against buying links to generate traffic but recommends that paid links should have a “nofollow” tag on them to prevent search engines following the link and Page Rank being transferred. If you would like to look at whether buying links works or not, please read the post entitled “Buying links for SEO does it work?”
Right now to the business of how to chose a good link to buy.

Factors that determine what makes a good paid link:

1) The ranking of the site –not just in Google
When buying a link you need to assess the overall reputation of the site. Previously, Page Rank was a fairly good way of determining this. It is however my belief that Google places less importance on Page Rank now than it did previously, and that the visible Page Rank you see on your screen can often be a long way off the Page Rank Google actually has for the website. I would still take into account Page Rank but consider it as one of several factors. I would also look at the sites back links in Yahoo, check the sites Alexa ranking and see if the site is in the Yahoo and Open Source directories. If you use Firefox and buying links is going to be a regular occurrence, you should consider installing SEO for Firefox, which will help you see these statistics far quicker. Please be warned though, that this tool does slow Firefox down. For thorough instructions on how to assess the SEO welfare of a site visit the post entitled “How to check a web sites offsite SEO health”.

2) The relevance of the site
The relevance of the web site you are linking from makes a big difference as to whether or not you should buy a link from that site. The days when a link from a completely irrelevant site with a high Page Rank would shoot you up the rankings on your key words appear to be long gone. Look for sites that have a similar theme or topic to yours and that share some keywords. Try to remember that page links should bring your site traffic as well as just extra search engine juice. Traffic from paid links is no longer a bonus; it is a must as explained in point number 5.

3) The quality of the web site
Links from good quality web sites will be far more useful to you than poor quality ones. You should check to see that the web site has plenty of text on it that is original to that web site, that the text is of a good standard and that the site is regularly updated. You can check for duplicate content using this tool http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php.

4) The positioning of the link on the page
A links position on the page will affect the usefulness of that link to your web site not only in terms of traffic but also in terms of the search engines. The ideal position for your link is the middle of the page amongst the main content and surrounded by different content on each page that the link appears on. It is rarely practical to be able to buy links like this (which is why they are so valued). Other good positions for links are at the top of the page and on the side above the fold. It has often been suggested that the perceived position of a link, from a search engine’s point of view, can be manipulated using CSS. I personally believe that Google has now developed ways of reading CSS styles to an extent, but I can’t prove this. The fact of the matter is you would be hard pressed to find a Webmaster who will sell you a link on a decent web site and alter his style sheet for you, so the Google reading CSS debate becomes rather a mute point. If however you’re interested in the Google CSS debate check out http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002788.html.

5) Will the link be useful to people
I guess you may be thinking “Does this really matter if I only want the site for SEO?” The answer to this is yes it matters and it matters a lot, link popularity now seems to be having a bigger than ever effect on Google search rankings so having a link that is actually useful to people will not only bring you relevant traffic but will also boost your search engine rankings.

6) Can a search engine follow the link?
Obvious I know, but you would be amazed how many people overlook this when they buy links. You can guard against this by making it clear from the start when you buy the link that it must be crawlable by a search engine spider. Common problems include “nofollow” tags on links and links going to your site via a redirect page.

Hopefully you have found this article useful. If you would like to read more about buying links, check out “Buying links, what if?”
And “Buying links for SEO does it work?” . As always comments and questions are very welcome.

How to check a web sites offsite SEO health

There are many reasons why you would want to check the offsite SEO health of a web site; you may be sizing up the competition, considering buying a link or you may just want to see how your site is doing. One quick way to check the factors that affect sites offsite SEO health is to download and run SEO for Firefox. This tool, although very useful does slow Firefox down. So if you want to check a sites offsite SEO health manually here is how you do it.

1) Check the two major directories
A place in the two major web site directories will have an effect on a sites SEO health, so, to check for a sites presence in the Yahoo directory visit http://dir.yahoo.com/ and type the web sites address into the search box. To check for the web sites presence in the Open Directory Project do the same thing but instead of going to Yahoo visit http://www.dmoz.org/ and type the websites name in the search box.

2) Check the websites back links
The number and quality of back links will have an effect on the sites SEO health. The best way to check the back links is to go to www.yahoo.com and type into the search box without the link: followed by the name of your site for example link:www.bbc.co.uk . This will bring up a list of all the back links that Yahoo has for this site.

3) Check the Alexa Ranking for the site
Alexa ranking is an estimate of how much traffic the website receives. To check the Alexa rank of a site go to http://www.alexa.com and type the website address into the bar at the top, this will display the sites Alexa ranking.

4) Check the websites Page Rank
You can do this by downloading and installing the Google toolbar and enabling page rank. To do this, simply go to Google, type in Google tool bar, follow the link and install the toolbar making sure you select the option to enable Page Rank. Once you have installed the tool bar, simply visit the site and the Page Rank will be displayed in the bar at the top. If you don’t want to install Google tool bar (perhaps because of the privacy implications) - oh yes they know what you are looking at. Then you can go to http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker and type your URL in.

This post has covered the basic ways to check a sites offsite SEO health. There are, of course, other factors but these four should give you the indication of a sites offsite SEO health that you need. Any comments questions or suggestions are always welcome.

Google Adwords – How to waste your money on PPC Advertising

Google Adwords is, in my opinion, one of the best ways to market your business online. Quicker than SEO, it allows you to use a truly commercial message in the search results on Google and it also lets you react quickly to changes such as stock levels and competitor pricing changes and offers. That is not to say Google Adwords shouldn’t be used in conjunction with SEO and other online marketing, just that it is very good. So how do so many companies manage to waste so much money on something that is such an effective way of marketing on the web?

The Three ways most companies waste money on Google Adwords:

1) Using Overly General Keywords. An example of this from the truly exciting photocopier industry is this keyword: Sharp ARM125 set on broad matching. Many marketing executives in my experience would say “We sell Sharp Arm125 photocopiers, so this is exactly the keyword we want to be seen on.” But stop and think about the searches that could bring up this company’s advert. Examples of these would be “toner for a sharp arm125” “how to make copies on an ARM125” and you can see that none of these searches are from people wanting to buy a Sharp ARM125. So you’re probably thinking these people will see the advert and say “Well, I was after toner so I won’t click on the advert.” This will of course cost you nothing right? Wrong. Every time this advert is shown and not clicked on, your CTR (click through rate) goes down and your ads start to cost you more but it doesn’t stop there, which brings me neatly on to point number two.
2) Writing adverts to encourage everyone to click. Getting as many people to click on your advert as possible is not the objective. Getting the right people to click on your advert is. Many companies I have come across have understood that a lower click through rate can increase the cost of your clicks so they have done everything they can to get people to click. No bad thing you might say, well yes and no. By writing an advert that gets everyone to click through you will no doubt have an excellent click through rate but, and it is a big but, you will waste money by having people who will never buy your product clicking on your ad. When writing the advert try and strike a balance between encouraging the right people to click and others not to. It’s not an easy thing to do that’s for sure but you should always try.
3) Bad landing pages. I have saved the worst until last. In my opinion bad landing pages waste more Google Adwords money than anything else. The reasons for this are: firstly bad landing pages reduce your ads quality score making it more expensive to achieve the same position in the Google search results. Secondly bad landing pages stop visitors staying on your site and doing whatever the thing was you wanted them to do.
Basically if you get everything right and the pages your prospect lands on are irrelevant, unpersuasive or poorly designed you have wasted your money, as most prospects will simply go back to the search results.

So in summary use specific key words and make use of the different matching types in Adwords, try and write ads that will attract only realistic prospects and spend time making good landing pages. Thanks for reading this, all comments and questions are appreciated.