Last month, the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) released its 2011 State of Search Marketing Report. In conjunction with EConsultancy, SEMPO had more than 900 companies and agencies in 66 countries participate in a global online survey to determine the future of search marketing.

Taking a detailed approach, SEMPO’s annual survey evaluated spending trends within SEO, PPC and social media.  Respondents ranged from various business sectors and types of agencies.

According to SEMPO’s findings, the North American SEM industry will grow 16% in 2011, an increase of $19.3B, up from $16.6B in 2010. 2010 saw an increase of 14% from 2009. These  results are due from a large portion of companies increasing their investment in paid search and SEO as well as continued growth from Google and Microsoft-Yahoo.

The research shows a rise in the use of mobile Internet as having the highest impact on SEO. Local Search also contributed, with 43% of agencies citing this as a highly significant trend. In addition, the increased use in social networks has helped fuel this growth. More than half of companies are outsourcing their SEO and Social Media management and 54% of the companies surveyed said they expect to increase their SEO spend in 2011.

The 133 page State of Search Marketing 2011 Report can be downloaded by SEMPO members.

Generally speaking, search engines look at blog posts similarly to the way they evaluate web pages. So, everything you worry about for a normal web page (title tag, linking strategy, etc.) should be taken into consideration for each blog post (If you’re a newcomer to SEO or need just want a general refresher, we recommend you review this on page optimization post by SEOMOZ). In addition, blogs offer two additional elements, which we will focus on today, that can be used to enhance your optimization – categories and tags.

Categories

Creating categories on a blog is a way to organize each blog post into similarly related topics. This helps search engines understand what your blog posts are about through their association with other, related content. When creating categories, define them fairly broadly so that similarly themed posts can be placed within the same category. Each blog post should be assigned as few categories as possible – ideally only one.

Tags

Tags are similar to categories in the sense that they offer the ability to group together similar blog posts. However, post tags tend to be much more granular in nature, describing the various aspects of your posts in greater detail then a category might. Each new blog post can use existing tags that have already been created, or create new ones that more accurately describe the post’s subject matter. Each blog post should be tagged with a handful of descriptive tags.

Where Do I Create Categories and Post Tags?

Each blogging platform is different, but for WordPress (which is what we use) the categories and tags can be found on the right hand side of the “add new/edit post” screen. We’ve provided a quick screen shot below for your reference. The category area is highlighted in red, while the tag area is highlighted in blue.

Creating categories for your blog and tagging each post with relevant keyphrases is a great way to help achieve your optimization goals. It only takes a few additional minutes to do and is well worth your time so get in the habit of doing this before you publish each and every post.

Good luck and happy tagging!

Last week I spent 3 days working with builders and contractors at seminars held by Wimsatt Building Materials to help them grow their business online. One theme emerged as we travelled from city to city teaching new groups – many business owners were unaware of Google Places and its power to get them better visibility in Google with this simple, free tool.

Google Places is relatively new in the grand scheme of SEO, but its impact is growing larger by the day. Google is actively changing search results for place-based business — businesses that have a geographically defined trade area. Google Places is just as critical to our national franchise and real estate clients as it is to local roofing companies. Why?

In traditional search results, aggregators often won through their sheer volume of content and links, frequently pushing actual businesses out of the opportunity to appear on page one. This effectively forced businesses to purchase ads with the aggregators to be found.

Now Google tends to favor listings for single, physical, locations in searches that are geographically oriented. If you’re lucky, Google has already created one of these listings for you that you simply need to “claim” and update. If they haven’t, you can easily create a listing. Either way, your next step is to visit Google Places and optimize your listing!

If you’re beginning the process of optimizing your places page, the key things to focus on are:

• building out your listing with keywords. Notice who shows up in competitive searches and how the keywords from your search are bolded in the places results. That’s what you want to happen for your business! Don’t go overboard, though, or you stand to violate Google’s quality guidelines. In particular, don’t pack keywords into your business title unless they belong their naturally (don’t put “Jim’s West Side Plumbing – Ann Arbor, MI” if the name your company goes by is is just “Jim’s West Side Plumbing”).  The description is really the best places to deliver those juicy keywords.
• building out your listing with content. Ultimately you want your places page to be “lived in” – full of relevant information, pictures, videos, etc. In some lines of business your places page may be the only page your customer visits before making a decision to call you. Make sure your first impression is a good one – remember your competition is always as close as one click of the back button!
• cultivating reviews. You’ll see in many searches that locations with reviews show up closer to the top of the list. The algorithm isn’t that simple of course, but more reviews are a great place to focus your time and attention because they help your ranking AND they ultimately help your potential customers make a decision. Having more reviews also draws attention to your listing in cases where Google shows star rankings, increasing your odds of getting clicked on and giving you the opportunity to showcase why you’re the best choice for that consumer.

Good luck with your Google Places listing!

We really feel its important to learn, share, and repeat in order to grow as knowledge workers. It’s also very important to our clients that they know we are on top of the latest search engine marketing (SEM) strategies. Therefore, we support industry conferences like SMX East because it gives us a chance to challenge like-minded individuals about the world of SEM.

So I really want to introduce you to one of our amazing analysts, Jeremy Lopatin. We are sending him to SMX East on Monday because he wants to arm wrestle with a few other analysts on the topic of SEO. Using my convenient mobile device – – I took a spontaneous video of him this morning on why SMX East is the place to be on Monday.

Jeremy Lopatin is thrilled about SMX EAST

If you are in New York for the conference you should really connect with Jeremy and test his arm wrestling skills:)!
Twitter: @JeremyLopatin

You have heard the excitement by now about Google Instant – the new development where Google is reading your mind – predicting what you really want faster. What does this mean for your SEO strategy?

Google Instant is not going to change your rankings, which means that the fundamentals of SEO still apply. The words you decide to use on your site and in your paid search campaigns have just become even more important. Remember, your web site persona needs to match your user persona. This includes the language and words used on each page. You have to be on page one for these important words or you will not reap the rewards of Google Instant.

Long-term user experience could be affected. The way users search may change based on what Google thinks they should be searching for. The top keywords tend to be the top brands – when you type “T” you immediately see Target…subconsciously I have to believe this affects your thought process…or interrupts it if you are not totally focused.

When I see the word “Target” I immediately revert to that never-ending shopping list in my head…wonderful for Target but not great for their competitors or for the letter “T” which my daughter will now be programmed to think the letter “T” stands for Target when she searches on Google.

You can turn this feature off. In the screen shot, if you gaze over to the right of the search box the option is available. I wonder how many people will turn it off?

Our analysts will be avidly watching how Google Instant affects conversion rates and user behavior over the next few months. So please stay tuned!

As part of larger SEO engagements, we manage the Google Places listings for some of our clients who have many locations. For these, we help our clients flesh out their listings with keyphrases relevant to folks searching for their services. We ensure that the listings are as complete as possible and we help maintain the data by updating the listings when locations open, close, or change their address.

Well, the tricky part of this engagement is the information in spurious listings. For the data we upload, Google Places offers a nice interface through which we manage adding locations, removing locations, and updates in bulk. It is the listings we don’t upload that sometimes cause us and our clients consternation. Google Places receives data from more than just our uploads. It soaks in data from across the Internet, and unfortunately, sometimes it pulls in old or outdated information. Read More

Getting ranked well in MSN is relatively easy. The engine still puts heavy weighting on more traditional SEO techniques. It picks up sites quickly and allows new sites to rank with older sites. MSN doesn’t analyze the quality, age, changing nature of links as thoroughly as Google. Getting ranked well in MSN is as easy as:

1. Write title tags with keyphrases.
2. Write meta description tags with keyphrases (and probably meta keyword tags as well. Meta keyword tags are borderline useless in Yahoo! and Google; they are good for misspellings or non-competitive phrases that are related to a site’s content. They may still be given weight in MSN.)
3. Put keyphrases in the body text.
4. Get links from free generic directories with keyphrases in the anchor text.

Step four is really the key for quick MSN rankings. There are hundreds of free directories,and MSN appears to give just as much weight to them as it would to a link from an industry-related site.

The realm of local search is a burgeoning and rapidly evolving space. And since everyone is local somewhere, it’s a topic worthy of some consideration – whether you’re the mom-and-pop sandwich shop, or the multinational drugstore chain. This post is the first of a two-part series, in which I’ll introduce the concept of local search, and highlight some of the unique differences between optimizing for visibility in local search results versus traditional organic search results. Part two of the series will delve into some tactical “nuts-and-bolts” of local search optimization.

Before I go much further, let’s define what I mean by “local search”. Local searches are those made in pursuit of something tied to a particular geography, often with the intent of taking some sort of action offline. Really, you can think of these as the sort of queries one might have made (or still make) within printed yellow page directories. In response to the increasing use of search for local purposes, search engines evolved to serve up specialized results when they think the searcher is interested in a local result. Because of Google’s 72% domination of the internet search market, I will almost exclusively addresses optimizing for visibility within Google’s answer to local search – Google Places, which are displayed via Google Maps search results.

Search results for "brew pub ann arbor", serving up Google Places listings.

Local search is, in a certain sense, the great equalizer of internet search marketing. At times, traditional, purely concept-driven SEO might be seen as favoring the “big guys” – those who can afford substantial and wide-reaching SEO undertakings to establish their authority on a given topic and propel themselves to the top of the SERPs (content generation/syndication efforts, linkbuilding campaigns, sizeable online PR, etc.). Local search, on the other hand, favors, well… localness. And you don’t have to be big to be local.

This essential difference in the thrust of local search (compared to more general organic search) is driven by a distinct set of factors. Those factors prioritize the local significance and legitimacy of a business just as much as its topical relevance. As I mentioned above, Google will return location-driven Google Maps results on the SERP when it’s fairly certain the searcher is performing a local search. Those search results are populated by listings within Google Places, so much of the focus of local search optimization (for Google, anyway) is placed on tuning up those listings. Once you’ve tackled that, the key is making sure other aspects of your business’ online presence (local directory listings, customer review sites, your own landing page, etc.) are in proper alignment with your Google Places listing(s).

In my next post on this subject, I’ll go over ways specific ways one can demonstrate the legitimacy, topical relevance and overall significance of your local business to Google, resulting in improved visibility in local search results.

The key to writing for the web is the old writing rule – know your audience. To serve that audience, you have to provide them

1. valuable information,
2. that they can find (search engine optimized), and
3. that they can understand (optimized for on-screen reading).

I will leave creating valuable content for a different post, and today I’ll address items 2 & 3.

2. Do your keyword research: reflect your reader’s language

Writing for your audience means using their language, not yours. And, what’s amazing is you can find out what they’re saying by asking the search engines.

Search engine records provide real time information on what people are looking for in their own words.  What a treasure trove!

All you have to do is ask Google to “listen in” and you’ll get guidance on how to speak to your audience, and how to help them find you all at the same time. Keyword research is market research.

The image on the left is a screenshot from Google insights for search comparing “writing for the web” “seo writing” “web copywriting” and “search engine optimized writing”. On the right is the Google AdWords Keyword tool, started with four key word phrases and expanded the list to give me data on 100 phrases based on the words I started with. Try these tools out.

To improve your web writing:

• Explore the words used to describe your product or service, no doubt you will learn something valuable.
• And then, write content that emphasizes the high traffic phrases that fit your content. While this sounds like a “duh” you would be surprised by how unconsciously folks revert back to their internal-speak when they write for the web.

3. Write for reading on a screen

Your dear reader might have several applications open. She might be reading on a smartphone on a bus. She might think she’s concentrating, but multitasking is less effective than focused attention, most likely her attention is diffuse.

Additionally, reading on a screen happens more slowly and with less comprehension than reading from a page. Jakob Nielson has compiled a meaty  list of web reading studies and information.

So, copy written for the web needs to be more scannable.

• Prepare bullets and lists instead of long discursive paragraphs,
• Break up long text with images and illustrations to get your message across, and
• Use simpler language than you might for a reader with more focus.

There are several online readability tests that allow you to get feedback on the grade level of your web copy. But, Microsoft Word will also tell you the grade level of copy in your file, so there are lots of ways to assess this. You might take this a bit further and assess your copy against your competitors’ web prose, and compare to more general online sites you value (such as the New York Times online) to give you a general target level. You might find you’re writing at way too high a level to be digestible on the web.

Build on Success

Do your research – research the words and double check the scanability and reading level of   your web writing before you publish it. And then, in the best tradition of the web, assess what is successful and keep on making it more findable and valuable to people and to search engines alike.

The keyword density ratio, that is, the total times a targeted keyword appears in the overall text of a page, is still something we hear mentioned as an important consideration in SEO from many firms and agencies.

It’s not. The strategy has been firmly and consistently debunked by the leading thinkers in the industry. This is not to say, by the way, that adding your targeted keyphrases to a page’s content isn’t good for SEO. Of course it is. There just isn’t any secret formula for determining how often you should add them.

So why do people keep talking about keyword density? It is one of the most persistent myths in online marketing for four important reasons:

- It was true once. Before search engines really started to grow in sophistication, a lot of spammy strategies would get traction, the most famous of which was “keyword stuffing”, or the inclusion, in meta tags and on-page copy of huge blocks of repeated terms or repeated synonyms. In a bizarre nod to “usability” often   these blocks were made invisible to the user through formatting tricks like making the text the same color as the background.

Algorithmic changes started to make this strategy increasingly ineffective as early as 2001, but the approach had been so successful, and so low-effort, that it persisted as a strategy for years. These days few people think “stuffing” is a good idea, but the attraction of a low-effort “magic bullet” remains so appealing that the sanitized “keyword density” approach has replaced it in the SEO mythology.

- It makes a lot of logical sense if you think about SEO as a way to fool web crawlers. If the use of a keyword once helps with ranking, wouldn’t adding it a second time double the effectiveness? The problem is that the web crawlers — and, more importantly, their underlying algorithms — are extremely sophisticated, and grow more so every year. Even if keyword density were a real input into search engines, it would be one of 200 or more signals considered by Google alone.

- It is easier than writing copy properly. Who wouldn’t want to get a nice list of keywords, drop them in appropriate ratios on a page, and watch the traffic roll in? Modern crawlers, however, are much more focused on the actual content of the page and the relationship between that content and other related pages. A good way to think about keywords now is as a guidepost to the crawlers who are trying to contextualize the content.

In that regard, one keyword is most likely enough, and in fact it is more appropriate to mention context-appropriate synonyms rather than repeating the same phrase.

- It is untestable. You’d think this would be a detriment. However, those who persist in talking about keyword density argue that it cannot be seen as a single input, so the variation is hard to lock down. This is less than useless, and creates ranges of appropriate “density” as low as 1% and as high as 8%.

We would argue that this attraction to untestable strategies is a huge red flag. What is the point of a theory if you can’t test it, especially when your marketing budget is on the line as the bet?

These four reasons are not just a problem with keyword density; we think they are indicative of the biggest problems in the SEO field today, in that they allow people to get away with doing SEO badly. In reality, these four reasons can apply as the motivations behind many shady SEO recommendations.

The cynical side of me believes that SEO often attracts people who are excited about the complexity of a system but don’t like the intensive work in the trenches necessary to make it work. In that way, the myth of keyword density captures the essence of how this problem can be part of many SEO worker’s attitudes about their efforts, the results, and, most importantly, your money.

As an aside, if you are interested in doing SEO right, just dive into the SEO section of our blog. There are many great articles there about how to improve and optimize your site’s organic visibility.