Many SEO practitioners still apply optimisation techniques like in 1999. Back then popular belief was that it was perfectly enough to lure Internet users to a website with whatever means it takes and then everything else would would work fine. Things like readability were far off the SEO agenda.

For a few years now the SEO industry focuses on conversions, that is converting a website visitor to a client through web design for ROI. In order to achieve that the foremost task is to keep the visitor on the page in the first place.

Still you see plenty of people who do not apply the most basic readability measures to increase their conversions. Webmasters still risk a high bounce rate due to large chunks of text which are not easily digestible by people visiting a site. It actually makes them leave instantly in most cases.

It’s known at least since 1999 that people do not read on the web, they scan pages in order to find quick clues about the subject matter they are interested in.

There are at least 10 ways to provide them with such clues. Thus I introduce to to you 10 readability measures to increase conversions. I start with the most basic, important and must use methods of making any text readable. Of course you’re advised to write an abstract, intro or teaser even before the main text starts.

1. paragraphs
Any text that is longer than a few sentences must be split into paragraphs, otherwise the human eye can’t deal with it without getting tired very quickly, espeically on the Web where screen flickering even aggravated this problem.

2. bold, italic
Bold and italic are the two most basic ways of stressing or emphasizing the most important key terms in a text. Don’t ever use underline on text online unless it’s a link. Italic works best on new terms you introduce, bold on the most important parts of a given message. You should never use bold and italic more than once in a paragraph as this takes the emphasis away and confuses the reader.

3. background colors
Text marker like emphasis by background colors (think yellow!) can be very powerful to capture readers attention. It’s also a little annoying to the eye so use it wisely, like once per page. Also you could use very modest colors to prevent eye strain. Sometimes a grey backgropund color is perfectly enough.

4. citation
A very intriguing tidbit which also works without reading the whol etext is often great to get attention of the raeder. Thus I most often use at least one citation in my posts. Use blockquote for this purpose.

5. subheadlines
It is not coincidence that HTML has as many as 6 headline tags, the h1 - h6. Most people do not use more than 2 of them while at least 4 make sense. h1 as headline of the page (SEO blog), h2 as the headline of the article “12 Readability Measures to Increase Conversions”, h3 could be abstract. h4 can be used for long texts as headlines for each paragraph.

6. unordered (bulleted) lists
Unordered lists using the ul-tag are a very simple means to make a text readable. Any list of items that is no longer than 6 is best fitted into a simple bulleted list.

7. ordered (numbered) lists
Nothing makes a post more readable than a numbered list. Be it a top 7, 8, 10 or top 100 list. People reading on the web rely on lists to quickly find the relevant part of a text. You notice in an instant which items you already know or do not interest you and skip them, while perusing a page and jump to those most relevant to you.

8. tables
More complex data can’t be fitted into a simple list be it bulleted or numbered. Once you have to compare data you need a table with columns. tables provide a quick overview and comparison of numbers or factors. I love the our product vs the competition features tables and always stick to analyze them.

9. charts, pie charts e.g.
Humans can better grasp visual information than information hidden in a text. So whenever there are numbers, especially percentage numbers or date over time a chart is the best way to display them in a meaningful way. Pie charts are great for percentage numbers and bar graphs for data colected and compared over time.

10. images (photos)
Most main stream media employ illustrators for their feature articles. In SEO most people do not use images. Either they can’t afford illustrators or due to lack of SEO images, you just don’t see much of SEO you could photograph. Instead you can use real life stock images to illustrate your points metaphorically. Beware of SEO stock image cliches though. Nobody wants to see an ugly spider on a SEO company page or a magnifying glass like on all others.

11. pagination
Pagination is a method of making test readable we know from books and magazines. On the web pagination is often annoying and requires several clicks on tiny icons to see more images or read a whole text. Sometimes pagination can also result in duplicate content issues that hamper SEO efforts. On the other hand scrolling huge pages and loading them in the first place is annoying as well and makes people run away before the page is full loaded. You can connect both worlds by using CSS pagination.

12. borders
Ever since CSS was introduced you do not have to stick to bold and italic anymore, you can use background colors and borders as well. A border around a large piece of tect makes it appear like a painting. This very much magnifies the importance of such a text part.

I assume most people already know that you should place a text of approx. 200 words to not be considered an empty page by Google. This number has been contested but it’s common sense that you need content to get found in most cases. Also most of these measures have a direct positive impact on search engine visibility. For instance keyword repetition in lists is regarded as natural and is not perceived as keyword stuffing like elsewhere on a page.

Copyright SEOptimise. Original article from our Search Marketing News - Search Engine Marketing

12 Indispensable Readability Measures to Increase Conversions

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As shown in my last blog post, now that Google are using expanded broad match to trigger ads from “travel ppc” for a search query on “shooting holidays USA”, getting a comprehensive list of negative keywords is a good idea. In this post I list five good resources for finding negative keywords; some of them are not intended to be used in this way but they still give useful information about possible negative keywords.

1. SEO Book Forums
Most campaigns will want a generic list of negative keywords. Things like “free” or “reviews” are good examples of negative keywords for any sort of campaign that sells a service or product online. The SEO Book has a huge list of negative keywords on their SEO Community Forums. You need a subscription to access the forum; I don’t think it’s worth getting one just for this but if you have one already then make use of this resource which is a great negative keyword starting point.

2. Google Keyword Tool
This is an obvious one but it’s still worth mentioning. When you’re using the tool to look for keyword ideas and you see something that isn’t relevant to your ad group then select “negative” from the drop down menu and prevent your ads from showing.  You can also use any other keyword tool in a similar way.

3. Google Analytics
Once you’ve implemented the Google Analytics filters I talked about last week you’ll have a list of the search queries people used when they clicked your ads. Not only is this a great for finding new keyword variants it’s also a good source of possible negative keywords.

4. SpyFu
Get a SpyFu report on your own domain name. SpyFu works by doings its own Google searches and scraping the results. If it says you’re bidding on “Price searches” then an ad with your domain as a display URL is showing an ad for that term. You can also have fun trying to guess what broad match terms your competitors are using based on their paid keywords.

5. The Google SERPs
Everyone knows that when you do a Google search the search query appears in bold whenever it is written on the results page. What people may not have noticed is that Google also emboldens (is that even a word?) related terms that it thinks are semantically linked to the search query. For example if you search “SEO” then “search engine optimisation” also appears in bold. If you see something in bold that isn’t relevant then add it as a negative.

6. Google Search Based Keyword Tool
As you’ve probably read yesterday, the new Google Search Based Keyword Tool is designed to help you spot missed opportunities in your AdWords campaign. Like most keyword tools it can also be used to find good negative keywords. This one is worth mentioning in its own point because it also gives you suggested landing pages for each new keyword. If one of your existing PPC landing pages is appearing as a suggestion for a lot of negative keywords then this suggests that the page should be more tightly optimised to prevent Google matching it with other PPC search terms.

Another useful thing to remember is to keep thinking in terms of your ad groups when adding negative keywords; if you have an ad group for “red cars” and an ad group for “blue cars” you should add “blue” as a negative in the “red cars” ad group. Otherwise expanded broad match might decide that since your “red cars” ad group has such a great quality score it might display that ad on the query “blue cars” even if you have [blue cars] as an exact match in your other ad group.

There is also a useful summary of a discussion on how negative keywords are matched over at seroundtable which is definately worth a look if you’re adding negative key phrases rather than just keywords.

Copyright SEOptimise. Original article from our Search Marketing News - Search Engine Marketing

6 Resources for Finding Negative Keywords

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With Twitter the phase of “do we really need it?” is over. The “how do we use it?” phase is right now. There are numerous ways of using Twitter for everything from business to bull**** and even clients come up to me and ask me about Twitter after reading one of those Twitter articles in the main stream media.

So what are the Twitter tools that really make a difference for SEO and overall business users?

We see at least a dozen new Twiter tools every other day. So I selected just 30+ Twitter tools that are most useful right now. Some of these tools have been around for a few months some have sprung up just recently. They have one thing in common: You must be aware of these tools in case you’re serious about Twitter participation.

Twitter Clients

TweetDeck
Sleek Adobe Air desktop client for Twitter offering a good overview with several panes.

twhirl | the social software client
One of the more popular Twitter clients.

Spaz: An Open-Source Twitter Client for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux
Cross platform open source Twitter client.

Hahlo
Web based iPhone (and iPod Touch) optimized Twitter app.

Twinkle - New iPhone Twitter Client Uses Locate Me Features! | Just Another iPhone Blog
Twitter client for the iPhone that allows you to socialize with people near you. Great for conferences it seems.

Twobile: A Twitter client for Windows Mobile - Download Squad
Twitter client for Windows mobile powered mobile phones. Most smartphones other than iPhone, Blackberry and Google Phone use Widows Mobile.

Misc. Twitter Tools

Twellow :: Twitter Search Directory, Twitter Search Engine
Twellow is the “Yellow Pages” of Twitter.

iTweet 2 : Web
This is an alternative web based interface for Twitter and indeed it’s a little more usable than the default one, for instance it offers one click retweets and makes bio links clickable etc.

TwitterCounter: How popular is @photojojo
This is a Twitter followers counter similar to the Feedburner count for blog subscribers.

Magpie: Make Money on Twitter
Magpie is an ad-network for Twitter. It boast that users can make something like 50 to 200$ a month just by tweeting.

About crowdstatus :: Crowdstatus.com
This tool allows you to create address groups of people at Twitter and notify all of them at once.

Twitter WordPress Plugins

Twitter for WordPress - Rick’s HideOut
Very basic but unobtrusive way of including your Tweets in your WordPress blog.

Wordpress Twitter Widget
Clean and simple Twitter widget for the WordPress sidebar.

WP to Twitter | Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design
Twitter updater plugin using the Cli.gs short URL service for tweeting your posts.

Adnan`s Crazy Blogging World » Blog Archive » My blog gets twitterized
Basic and quite ugly but very popular Twitter plugin many bloggers use, even TechCrunch.

AJAX Twitter plugin for Wordpress
Advanced AJAX powered widget for your blog not only displaying tweets but letting you send updates from your blog.

Twitter Updater » Fireside Media Development Blog
This tool lets you tweet your blog posts automatically.

Firefox Extensions for Twitter

TwitterFox – naan studio
Simple but effective and popular Twitter Firefox add on.

TwitBin - twitter your browser - twitbin.com
Even simpler Twitter add on for Firefox.

TwitKit
Another Twitter Firefox client with more features though.

TwitterBar :: Firefox Add-ons
Let’s you post from the address bar of your browser.

Twitter Social News

Twitturly - Real-time Link Tracking on Twitter
Digg-like interface for the currently hot tweets.

MicroBlogBuzzes of the last 24 hours
Shows you what’s most popular today, this week etc. on Twitter and across the other common microblogging platforms.

Twitturls - Popular Twitter Links Tweeted err Twittered err Twhatever
Shows the latest and most popular links on Twitter.

ReadBurner: What’s Shared on the Web
Lets you monitor the buzz around Twitter elsewhere among many other memes.

POPrl.com / Shrinking popular URLs since 1973 / What’s POPular
Short URL service like TinyURL but better. Offers not only stats but also a Digg-like interface for the most popular URLs shared.

Twitter Analytics

TweetStats :: Graphin’ Your Stats
This statistic tool measures everything from when you tweet (weekdays, time of day) to who your real friends are by counting how often you address people.

Twitstat.com - Twitter Analytics
Both a Twitter search engine and popularity stats at the same time (e.g: showing most active users).

Twitterverse
A Twitter keyword tag cloud for quick overview on what’s going on.

Twist - see trends in twitter
Twist allows you to quickly view and compare popularity trends on Twitter. It’s similar to Google Trends.

FriendOrFollow.com - Who’s not following you back? Who aren’t you following?
This tool compares your list of friends with your followers and shows you who does not follow you back.

Twitter Twerp Scan
Gives you a quick overview about your followers so that you don’t have to click each one.

These 30+ Twitter tools will allow you a seamless integration of Twitter in your daily routine but make sure you know what you doing on Twitter and have some business objectives. There is a new blog by problogger Darren Rowse called Twitip to help you out with that.

Copyright SEOptimise. Original article from our Search Marketing News - Search Engine Marketing

30+ Very Useful Twitter Tools You Must Be Aware Of

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Update: A source with knowledge of the company confirms to me that Epivoz is working on at least an new site for the environment vertical, though it is unknown if the project has ever progressed beyond an internal demo.

Since launching in 2005 on a sub-domain of its politics-themed older brother Techmeme has become a daily (hourly?) must read site in the technology blogosphere, in the same way that Memeorandum has become a must read site in the political blogosphere. Techmeme and its related sites, which are operated by a bootstrapped, two-person company called Epivoz, are so popular among bloggers and news junkies because they just do a better job surfacing the day’s top news stories, and more quickly, than better funded rivals like Google News and Topix.

Since Memeorandum launched in 2004 and Techmeme in 2005 (originally as a sub domain of Memdorandum), Epivoz has launched two other sites on the same back end: WeSmirch for celebrity gossip in March of 2006, and BallBug for baseball news a few weeks later.

“What’s the next vertical site for Memeorandum? [Founder Gabe Rivera] won’t say exactly, but from what I’ve seen, he’s a discussion follower. If blogs are talking about something and linking back and forth a lot, expect Memeorandum to be there eventually,” wondered Mike Arrington when BallBug was launched. However, in the intervening two and a half years, the Techmeme empire has remained exactly the same size.

A job post spotted over the weekend, however, points to where Techmeme might expand in the future. Epivoz is looking to hire employee number three, and one of the required skills that they’re looking for, is familiarity with the following topics: “technology, business, finance, economics, politics, biotech, clean tech, the environment, football, or automobiles.”

Technology and politics are already covered by Epivoz’s two most popular sites (Techmeme and Memeorandum, repsectively), but business, finance, economics (all currently popular and related issues), biotech, cleantech, the environment, football, and automobiles suggest potential new verticals for the company. Could Techmeme be readying the launch of new companion news watching sites? It sure sounds that way.

Given the current state of the world economy, finance and economics news has become topic number one for many consumers, so that would make a lot of sense as a area of expansion for the site. Cleantech and the environment make sense as well, since the price of oil has created a lot of mainstream interest in those topics. Football and cars, meanwhile, are heavily blogged about topical areas that would fit well into Epivoz’s link-based algorithmic news gathering framework.

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It can be very difficult at times to find the actual search terms your PPC traffic arrives from, so this is a Google Analytics trick all advertisers should know. Google’s search query report can be useful but for high-traffic phrase or broad match keywords being told that 8 of your clicks arrived on “85 unique queries” doesn’t really give you the complete picture!

Since the introduction of expanded broad match Google can (and does) match your broad match keywords to just about anything vaguely relevant; knowing these queries is important, either to negative match them or to reduce CPCs by using an exact match. The image below really does highlight this point, notice the extremely irrelevant term “shooting holidays USA” was triggered by a broad match of travel PPC!

This report was setup last week and shows the AdWords keywords (either exact, phrase or broad match) followed by the actual search term which triggered the clickthrough in brackets:

(Click for full-size image)

Step by step guide on how to setup a Search Query report in Google Analytics
This information can easily be found in Google Analytics but, although the method is simple, it is not obvious; to be able to access this PPC goldmine you have to use filters. Until last week I didn’t even know the filters feature existed and even if I had I wouldn’t have been able to do the regular expressions stuff that our filters will need. For this reason I’d like to thank the Google Analytics Experts and the linklove blog for giving me some simple step by step instructions.

• In the above case we’ve set up a new profile before messing around, just to ensure that if a mistake was made none of the data is affected. There’s an “Add a Website Profile” option on the Analytics settings page; you want to add a profile for an existing site and then name it.
• Then you want to write the two filters; click the “Filter Manager” button and then add a filter.
• This first filter will get the search query and place it in a user defined field. I call it “Get Search Query” but you can name it whatever you want to. Select “Custom Filter” from the filter type drop down menu and select the “Advanced” radio button. You should see some input fields named “Field A -> Extract A” and similar.
• In the “Field A -> Extract A” drop down menu select “Referral”; this will pull out the SERP’s URL on which the ad was shown. In the box to the left on the drop down menu write “(\?|&)(q|p)=([^&]*)” without the quotation marks. This is a regular expression which extracts the search query from the SERP’s URL.
• In the “Field B -> Extract B” drop down menu select “Campaign Medium” and write “ppc|cpc” in the box. This filters out all the organic clicks.
• In the “Output To -> Constructor” drop down choose “Customized Field 1” and enter “$A3” in the box. This just tells Google Analytics where to store the data. Finally you need to click the button to make field B required and the one to turn off case sensitivity. Then apply the filter to your new profile.
• The 2nd filter includes this new data in the keyword report. Again, you want to set up an advanced custom filter but this time choose “Customized Field 1” from the “Field A -> Extract A” drop down. In the box write “(.*)”
• For “Field B -> Extract B” select “Campaign Term” to find out which of your keywords the search query matched and enter “(.*)” again in the box.
• Finally in the “Output To -> Constructor” menu choose “Campaign Term” or wherever you want your data to go and then enter “$B1, $A1” The space after the comma means that you can export your data to a .csv and have a separate field for the actual search term.
• If you’ve followed the steps as I’ve laid them out then the filters should be applied in the right order; if you want to check the information is there when you click to edit the new profile from the “Analytics Settings” page.

As always, it’ll be a little while before Google Analytics starts to register the new data so don’t be too impatient. Unfortunately the filters can’t be applied retrospectively so you can’t start using them on all your old data but as far as I’m concerned this is the only downside. Set up the filters and start refining your AdWords campaigns!

Copyright SEOptimise. Original article from our Search Marketing News - Search Engine Marketing

Google Analytics Tip - How to Find All AdWords Search Queries Triggered from Phrase/Broad Matches

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The Google Webmaster Central blog yesterday posted about it’s new SEO Starter Guide, available for free PDF download.

This is excellent news for small business owners, especially during a recession, as many companies will be looking to push their search rankings/traffic forward but without the budget for SEO consulting.

“Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.”

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there if you’re looking to learn SEO yourself from forums so the guide is great to provide a common-sense approach to understanding on-site search engine optimisation. It’s also good news for the search industry that Google are providing information like this. By educating webmasters about SEO best practices this will hopefully clear-up any false impressions or concerns some may have about the industry as a whole.

For more information there’s a write-up over on Search Engine Land.

Copyright SEOptimise. Original article from our Search Marketing News - Search Engine Marketing

Google SEO Starter Guide is Great News for Small Businesses

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The following is republished from The SitePoint Tribune #422.

Christmas is just around the corner, and whether you celebrate it or not, the event happens to coincide nicely with the end of the calendar year — a great time to thank those who have supported your business over the last twelve months.

Not only that, but a well-timed Christmas message may end up reviving a waning business relationship. Given we’re halfway through November, we’d need to work fast to meet printing and postal deadlines, or alternatively, build an electronic Christmas message, if that’s preferred.

Let’s look at options. The traditional Christmas card is still well received. There are a few rules with these, though:

• Try to opt for your own professionally-designed company Christmas card, so that it’s unique to your business (and there’s no risk of a competitor sending the same image!)
• For the personal touch, hand-sign rather than print signatures in the card.
• It’s better to send earlier rather than later. Leaving it until December 20th isn’t a wise move. Ideally, the card should arrive in the first week of December.
• Cards should fly solo, rather than share the envelope with extra marketing material that makes the card less genuine.
• It’s fine to include a logo, but keep it small or put it on the back so that it’s not the main focus.
• If you must resort to off-the-shelf cards, buy them through a charity who uses the profits to help others.
• Consider a different concept, such as the products MOO offer, with varying shapes and an individual touch.

Electronic cards are great as well, and are considerably better for the environment. They do, however, suffer from low open rates, and may get read by people other than those it was actually intended for. Indeed, it’s possible less people will see it, compared to the paper versions which tend to sit in office reception areas, being read by all in the weeks leading up to the break.

If you do send an ecard, consider using email campaign software; it can provide a text version if required and track email open rates. There are plenty of options available on the market.
When designing that email card, consider your audience wisely, as well as the technical limitations of email. To see which email clients support what CSS, have a gander at the Email Standards Project web site.

Prefer to send something more substantial? There’s always the usual bottle of wine or gift hamper. Perhaps consider trying some branded promotional gear, such as USB flash drives with your logo, or similar.

Make sure though, that you either buy quality products or forget it. There’s nothing worse than spending all year building a reputation for quality, only to damage it by sending some cheap pen that never works, or has your logo printed badly on the side.

It’s unfortunate, but clients will remember it — more often than the times you worked all night to get a web site live for them.

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We have all seem the arguments about how Rails doesn’t scale, it’s hard to deploy or that it will explode in your hands at any given moment. For those of us that use Rails on a daily basis, we know that just like any other language or framework, Ruby and Rails have they own nuances, but on the whole much of this is based on FUD. David Heinemeier-Hansson — the creator or Rails — has written 5 myth busting articles to put the record straight.

So next time you are being attacked by a PHP or Java programmer at the pub, politely point out that they are wrong!

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Brand or product plus alternative

• iphone alternative
• iphone competitor
• iphone rival
• better than iphone
• like iphone

I see a lot of searches like that where people know only one brand but don’t want to stick with it.

Entering the market late means you’re a “mom and pop shop” opening in the vicinity of a huge WalMart or Tesco store so you can’t compete by offering exactly what the huge chain offers. You got specialise and be different.

Choose several of these modifiers, the most apt ones for your business and start optimising for them right away. Using modifiers brings SEO results much quicker. Later on you still can rank for the most competitive terms.

Copyright SEOptimise. Original article from our Search Marketing News - Search Engine Marketing

Keyword Research: 7 Keyword Modifiers to Optimise New Websites For

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There has been a lot of chatter about whether US President-Elect Barack Obama, whose campaign for the White House took great advantage of social media sites, would use his web savvy to become the first so-called “Web 2.0 President.” There’s also been debate about what that might mean, exactly.

One thing that people have suggested Obama do is continue to use his ultra-popular YouTube channel to communicate with the American public, and the world. Today, he announced that he will do just that, according to the Washington Post. Obama will begin video recording his weekly presidential radio address and posting it on YouTube shortly after it airs on the radio. In addition, the next US president will also conduct online interviews and hold question and answer sessions via the video sharing site.

“The goal, officials say, is to put a face on government. In the following weeks, for example, senior members of the transition team, various policy experts and choices for the Cabinet, among others, will record videos for Change.gov,” writes the Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas.

That’s actually already begun. Last night, transition team co-chair Valerie Jarrett posted a video update on the Change.gov transition web site using YouTube.

Obama’s weekly web videos are an updated version of President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous “fireside chats,” conducted via radio in the 1930s. When Roosevelt took office in the 30s, America was in the midst of an economic depression and he had a need to communicate with the American people on a regular basis. Radio technology, which was fairly new at the time, offered an innovative way to do so. For the first time, Americans could actually hear the voice of their president speaking directly to them in their homes — they didn’t have to wait to read a transcript or an account in the next day’s newspaper.

It could certainly be argued that Obama has a similar need to communicate directly with the people given the current worldwide financial crisis. Online video streaming is one of the most recent communication innovations, and like radio or television, it allows people to see and hear the president in their homes. Unlike radio or television, however, it is on demand, it is worldwide, and it allows watchers to post an immediate response — it’s a two-way medium. What Obama does to embrace the read/write nature of social media sites is yet to be established.

That Obama is embracing YouTube as part of his presidency is no surprise. He’s posted over 1,800 videos to the side and racked up over 110 million views. He also already said that he planned to hold YouTube “fireside chats” during a YouTube interview about a year ago. Obama will actually be continuing a “Web 2.0-ization” of the White House that current US President George Bush started during his presidency. Bush offers RSS feeds, podcasts, and videos of daily press briefings from the White House web site.

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