Ask Kalena

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SMX Sydney was my first Search Marketing Expo and from what I am hearing, I am not the only one who was impressed. See Rand Fishkin’s blog post regarding SMX Sydney.

This year Search Engine College was one of the official sponsors and as such Kalena and I (wo)manned an exhibition stand at the Expo. As a first-timer, this provided me with the chance to meet several industry rock stars and to really get a feel for the search marketing industry. The sessions were informative, all exhibitions were well put together and the atmosphere was professional - yet relaxed and friendly.

Our stall was quite busy with plenty of interest regarding training options for emerging search engine marketing professionals. Even so, Kalena and I both managed to sneak off and attend several sessions happening downstairs throughout the two days.

In this post I want to highlight several points Ciaran Norris from Altogether Digital, made in his presentation “Copy Writing for Search”…

When writing articles, blog posts or web site copy that you wish to be easily digestible by humans and search engines alike, keep the following in mind:

Keep headlines clear and concise: Avoid metaphors and abbreviations. A reader should have a good idea about the subject of the piece they are about to read, simply by looking at the headline.

The opening sentence of the first paragraph is very important: Aim to capture the attention of your readers immediately. The first sentence of an article or blog post is often used by search engines when displaying your link in the results page for a search query (SERP). Research has shown that click through rates are greatly influenced by the two lines of text displayed under a link in the SERP.

Conduct a competitive analysis of keywords: Research which keywords or phrases achieve higher click through rates for similar articles. If you want to reach an audience outside your own region use keywords which are not region specific.

Placement of links within copy: Ciaran pointed out the difference between online and offline copy is the ability to link. When using embedded links make sure your reader has a clear idea about what they are going to find when they click through. Do not use vague link descriptions as this can frustrate and alienate your reader. Important links should be used early in your article, less important links towards the end. Links which are not directly related, but still useful to your reader, are best placed boxed-off somewhere to the right or bottom of the page. Linking can also be used to create a timeline of issues related to your subject. One of the ways to do this is to create a landing page and link to every relevant article regarding your subject.

Track people who link to you: Keep track of who links to you and build a network of industry contacts regarding your subject matter. Find blogs which are related to your niche and link to them. Establish yourself as a voice of authority. A reader who finds you through five or six different sources will recognize you as a trusted source of information regarding your subject.

Ciaran is a fabulously entertaining presenter and his session really appealed to my background in journalism. This was the first of three sessions I attended and I will include another post with notes from Jane Copeland’s session on Link Baiting shortly.

From all of us involved in the search marketing industry in this part of the world, many thanks go to Barry Smyth and Lisa Davis for organizing such a fantastic event, and also to the many international speakers who traveled so far to be with us here in the land “Down Under”.

Popularity: 50%

We’ve been busy bees at Search Engine College this week. First up, we’ve created new Certification Seals for graduating students to place on their web sites as proof they have completed a Certification course with us.

The new seals replace our existing ribbon-style seals and contain the student id number embedded within them to aid verification of a student’s Certification status by potential employers or clients. You can see an example on our Certification page.

Inspired by the Google AdWords Professional program (GAP) and the verification page provided for every GAP, we have also created a dedicated Certification Status page for every graduate of Search Engine College. The status page lists a student’s id number, the course/s they have successfully completed and any resulting Certification. It also displays a copy of their Certification Seal for verification purposes. Example here.

Any graduate wishing to replace their old Certification Seal with the new version and obtain their Status Page URL should contact me.

Popularity: 30%

Hi Kalena,

Help! I’ve had my Hightower pottery website for about 4 years. On a good day I may get 20 hits and that’s during the holidays. Normally I get between 0-10 hits a day. I have listed my site in probably a dozen directories over the years and submitted to the same number of search engines. What am I doing wrong? Is it a content issue?

Charles

Yes Charles, it is a content issue. More precisely, it’s a Yahoo SiteBuilder issue. Why the heck are you using a rubbish Yahoo Content Management System (CMS) to build your site?

Just like Homestead SiteBuilder, which I ranted about earlier this week, Yahoo SiteBuilder is yet another CMS that creates multiple headaches when trying to optimize your pages so they are found in search engines.

I’m not hugely familiar with the SiteBuilder interface, but here are just some of the problems I see:

• The Title and META tags are identical on every page. I’m guessing this is a limitation of Yahoo SiteBuilder that you can’t change. This is limiting the ability of each of your site pages being found in search engines.
• You’ve got a serious case of code bloat, thanks to excessive, code added to your HTML pages by the SiteBuilder program.
• All of your image files and probably others are stored somewhere on the Yahoo site and referenced by your pages, instead of being stored on your own domain.
• This isn’t anything to do with the CMS, but your home page doesn’t really have enough text on the page to satisfy search engines and your pages don’t appear to be optimized for target search keywords and phrases.
• Another non-CMS issue, there don’t seem to be many internal or external links pointing to your site. You should probably try to gain some links from other web sites in your industry as theme-based links will help boost your position in Google. For example, I’m betting that within a month, you will be getting more traffic from this page than any other source. Such is the power of a well-placed link.

If you are serious about your business, you need to get serious about your site’s compatibility with search engines. You’d be better off paying a site designer to build you a REAL site that can be properly optimized. If you can’t afford a professional site design, consider installing the (free) WordPress blogging platform on your server and taking full control over your site that way. If you can’t afford a search engine optimizer, consider posting your requirements on our Search Engine College jobs board as there are a lot of SEO students just itching to sharpen their skills on a real site.

Take a month and teach yourself how to use WordPress if you have to - it’s pretty easy and search engines seem to love pages created with it (this site is built with WordPress). I’d also recommend taking the Search Engine Optimization Starter course at Search Engine College so you can better understand what makes a site rank well in search engines. It will be the best investment you’ll make all year and will help you get that gorgeous pottery in front of more eyeballs!

Popularity: 43%

SMX Sydney is gearing up to be the “must-attend” search engine marketing event of the year in Australia and there has been a lot of social media buzz and anticipation leading up to it.

To add to the excitement, because Search Engine College is sponsoring the event, we’ve scored a free conference pass for one lucky reader of this blog.

To win the free pass, simply answer this:

“What question would you like to hear Danny Sullivan ask Google’s Marissa Mayer at the Keynote Conversation on Day 1 of SMX Sydney?”

For your chance to win, contact us with your details and include your answer to the above question in the “comments” section of the form. Make sure you include an email address so we can contact you if you win! The answer I like the best will win a free pass to SMX Sydney. The winner will be announced on this blog on March 25.

In the meantime, if you’re planning on attending SMX Sydney and you haven’t registered yet, below is a coupon code that will give you 15 percent off the full conference ticket price:

SMX08-SECVIP

This is a short-term deal so register right now! And don’t forget, in the exhibit hall, we’ll be handing out Search Engine College t-shirts and $100 discount coupons which conference attendees can use towards a course of their choice. So if you’re planning on attending SMX Sydney, please stop by our booth to say hi and pick up your discount coupon and free t-shirt.

Popularity: 23%

On behalf of the tutors and staff at Search Engine College, I’d like to offer congratulations to our most recent graduates:

Search Engine Optimization 101

• Bob Schaller
• Dominique Neveling
• Micky Stuivenberg
• Laura Paradise
• Ellen Stender
• Bill Casey
• Bruce Gow
• Diane M. Pentheros
• Beth Evans
• Jeffrey Wieland
• Scott Spain

Search Engine Optimization 201

• Cheryl Hardy
• Kimberly Bock
• Laura Paradise
• Micky Stuivenberg
• Bruce Gow
• Jeffrey Wieland
• Colleen Lee
• Scott Spain

Pay Per Click Advertising 101

• Rick Hardman
• Evgeny Galkin
• Laura Paradise
• Bruce Gow
• Jeffrey Wieland

Web Site Usability 101

• Bruce Gow

Link Building 101

• Laura Paradise

Certified Search Engine Marketer

• Harshvardhan Kharshingkar
• Laura Paradise
• Bruce Gow

Congratulations to you all! Please contact your tutor if you haven’t yet received your hard copy certificate, Status Page or certification seal. Please stop by Search Engine College from time to time to download updated lesson material, contribute to Search Engine Wiki or check our Search Engine Marketing Jobs Board to use your certification to find a job in the industry.

Popularity: 20%