Working with Navigation in SEO [SEO Fundamentals]

Syndicated From: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/o1_Jmbg3u-I/working-with-navigation-in-seo

Posted by richardbaxterseo

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A simple example expanding a list of options for a user searching for flights:

Improving your navigation can have a positive impact on your site architecture. By making sure these fundamentals are covered, you can build your marketing efforts on a solid foundation knowing your website is crawlable and super-friendly to search engines. What are your favorite examples of great navigation?

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Yup, SEO Can Be A Competitive Advantage

Syndicated From: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/o3svLErPW0c/how-to-make-seo-an-unfair-competitive-advantage-for-your-business

Posted by randfish

Another great post from Jason Cohen popped onto my radar yesterday entitled “Startup Competitive Advantages that Work.” It’s definitely worth a read, even if you’re not at a startup.

As a passionate (OK, maybe obsessed is the right word) startup guy and someone who loves SEO, I couldn’t help but want to jump into the fray with some thoughts on how the field we’re in – domination of the organic search results – can be an unfair, competitive advantage for businesses that know how to wield it.

The core of Jason’s post is below:

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Last week I detailed the most common misconceptions about competitive advantages, so go read that if you haven’t already.

To summarize: Anything that can be copied will be copied, including features, marketing copy, and pricing. Anything you read on popular blogs is also read by everyone else. You don’t have an “edge” just because you’re passionate, hard-working, or “lean.”

The only real competitive advantage is that which cannot be copied and cannot be bought.

Like what?

And he’s got a number of terrific answers, but SEO, and more broadly, phenomenal organic web marketing, isn’t among them. Before I tackle why I think it belongs there, let me explain the difference between “good” SEO and defensible, “competitive advantage” style SEO.

“Good” SEO means

• You have a solid quantity of unique, quality content that users and customers will find useful.
• Your pages and links are crawlable, indexable and generally search friendly.
• You’ve done your homework with keyword research and update it regularly (monthly – quarterly) as new terms/phrases rise/fall in demand.
• You’ve engaged in some decent link acquisition campaigns, garnering links from a few authorities in your industry, some blogs, maybe a few article sites, press releases, link exchanges and the like to the point where you have similar metrics to your competition.
• You’ve engaged in social media and have profiles on the major sites, have a few tweets every week that point to your site and a few hundred fans on Facebook.

In other words, you’ve followed best practices, done the “right” things and while an SEO audit might reveal some missed opportunities and an error here or there, you’d generally come away with an “A” on your SEO report card.

“Competitive Advantage” SEO means

• Your site produces content people love to visit and love to share in a scalable, hard-to-replicate way
• Your on-site SEO is “best of breed.” Note: This isn’t much different than good SEO – on-page/on-site optimization is unlikely to ever be a competitive advantage.
• Your keyword research is baked into the content generation process. The material your site produces fulfills keyword demand just as, or even before it exists by tapping into the subconscious of the web and the culture of ideas/questions in your industry/niche.
• Website owners and content creators have a powerful psychological incentive to link to your work frequently, just as those who participate/contribute to the social web are incented to share via their network of choice.

Some Examples of “Competitive Advantage” SEO Sites:

• StackOverflow
• Yelp
• Wikipedia
• LinkedIn
• Mashable
• Last.fm
• NY Magazine
• Amazon
• Cheezburger Network
• WordPress
• AllRecipes
• SmashingMagazine

All of these have content pouring out of them, generated rapidly, scalable, and in time with query demand. They have broad networks of patrons and participants that incent the spreading and sharing of their content through links and social networks. They employ content+SEO+sharing in a high-return equation that’s nearly impossible for competitors to match. I’ll illustrate:

That’s not to say they can’t be beaten, but runner B (a new competitor) is going to have to go dramatically faster than runner A (the market leader) if they want to catch up before runner A sees them coming and turns up the jets.

SEO Can Be a Competitive Advantage

This is my argument for why the level of truly great SEO I described above, belongs on the list of unfair competitive advantages.

1. It’s massively hard to duplicate
2. It’s prohibitively expensive to buy (and just buying the link influence signals violates guidelines)
3. It requires tremendous creativity paired with exceptional execution and a time-bounded network effect (all of the sites I mentioned have dramatically increased their lead over time and continue to do so)

It’s certainly not the only option, but it can have a dramatic impact. If you’re starting a company, starting an SEO campaign or just want to renew your vision for how your site will go from ranking for a few keywords to becoming a dominant market player, it’s, at the least, a strategy worthy of consideration.

p.s. If you’re interested in some more practical SEO advice this morning, my slide deck from the Blueglass LA conference – Strategic SEO Link Analysis – may be able to scratch that itch.

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Facebook Marketing: Ultimate Guide

Syndicated From: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/TWrmSHIDkhs/facebook-marketing-ultimate-guide

Posted by timsoulo

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Howdy SEOmoz fans! It is an overused practice to start from some “shocking” stats and dissertate on how Facebook is powerful and important for business. So, I will just consider you all know what is Facebook and how cool it is.

What you’re about to read is a step-by-step SMM strategy for promoting your business on Facebook. I’ve gathered all the best practices and tips that I have used myself, together with some advice that I haven’t tried but am confident will work well. Ok. That’s enough for the intro, let’s go!

Where To Start?

1. Brand Ambassador.

First of all, don’t use your personal account to promote your business, unless you want your customers to see your childhood pictures and lulz from the recent party. You can create another (purely business oriented) instance of yourself or hire someone to become your brand ambassador. This will be the person who represents your business online and handles all communications, so the info on the profile should be brief and clear and all the pictures neat and professional. Remember that users will associate your business with this guy.

Power Tip: Create a separate e-mail account in Gmail and import all the e-mail addresses of your clients there. Now when you use this account to create a new Facebook profile – the system will automatically find all of your clients in your address book and suggest to add them as your friends on Facebook! What a great start!

2. Creating a Facebook page.

Promotion on Facebook is all about having a page for your business. To create one, go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/ and click the “+ Create a Page” button.

Power Tip: “Page Name” is one of the the strongest ranking factors on Facebook search. Don’t miss the opportunity to add some keywords you wish to rank for as you are not allowed to change your page name later.

Configuring Your Facebook Page

1. Profile picture & avatar.

Profile picture is one of the few things in the design of your page that you can actually customize, so be sure to make the most of it. Here are two great articles that will help you: “5 Creative Ways to Hack Your Profile Photo“; “Making the Most of Your Facebook Profile Picture“.

2. Page info.

The next important thing to do is fill your Facebook page with information about your business. Most of it is stored under the “Info” tab, which you cannot remove or hide. Lots of people visit it, so work hard to make your info as brief and engaging as you can. “Think SEO” and use your keywords, as each of the tabs is indexable by the search engines.

Power Tip: if you type a URL starting from http:// in the info box under your profile picture, Facebook will turn it into a clickable link. So you can easily refer your visitors to your website, blog or twitter account.

3. Applications.

• Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) – allows you to create 10 additional tabs, which can contain HTML/CSS, Flash, FBML, iframes and FBJS;
• NetworkedBlogs – allows you to post your RSS and Atom feeds directly to your wall;
• Twitter Tab – posts your twitter updates to a separate tab;
• Extended Info – adds an additional box which supports html/fbml, images, video and music to the left sidebar of your page;
• Fan Appz & Promotions – helps you handle all kinds of contests, sweepstakes & give aways.

Tip: you’ll probably end up with lots of tabs by adding various applications. However you can easily drag them around if you think that some of them are more important.

4. Vanity URL.

To be able to convert your ugly “326727833086?ref=sgm&ajaxpipe=1&__a=7″ URL into something fancy-looking, like “http://facebook.com/mybusinesspage” you need to have at least 25 fans. Once you do – go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ and click the “Set a username for your Pages” link at the bottom.

5. Custom landing page.

You need an attractive landing page, which will convert your visitors into fans. Here is when the FBML application comes into play. Using HTML, CSS, FBJS and even flash you can create awesome landing pages that people will not only “like”, but link to, and suggest to friends.

Tip: If you’ve got no development skills you can find some nice facebook FBML page templates that have just started to appear around the template stores.

What To Expect?

Before we start reviewing various Facebook promotion techniques, I’d like to clear things up a little bit. Essentially when someone “Likes” your Facebook page, they will be notified every time you update its status, it’s almost the same as following someone on Twitter. To have your message spread on Twitter you need to have your followers retweet your post so that their followers could see it and retweet in turn. On Facebook, the principle is a bit more sophisticated: when someone likes or comments your status update, this fact is being reflected in his profile. And when your status update gets a decent amount of “likes” and comments it is promoted to the Top News section of a user’s News Feed, so that more people could see it.

Now let’s refer to a famous “90:9:1 Social Behaviors Rule” to understand what it takes for your message to become visible.

Let’s consider that “Heavy Contributors” are those ready to comment on your update, “Intermittent” ones will probably “like” it, and “Lurkers” will read it or just scroll through. Say your page has 100 fans. Knowing the fact that only 12%-20% of all your “Fans” will see your status update in their Live Feed, we can see that:

I hope this delivers a clear understanding that Facebook promotion takes an enormous amount of effort to become successful.

Promoting Your Facebook Page Internally.

1. Using your Brand Ambassador.

• Add to friends any people that may be your potential customers or somehow relate to your business. Recently, Facebook has added Skype integration, which can suggest you some Facebook friends from the list of your Skype contacts. Once you have a decent amount of friends use the “Suggest to friends” and “Share” buttons to promote your Facebook page to them;
• Use Facebook Search to discover relevant pages, groups, events, people and even messages. With Search you can easily track any mentions of your brand and provide feedback – people really love that;
• Once you join pages, groups and events, you are able to participate in the conversation, which is a great way of direct promotion. Moreover you can see the list of the group members and easily add them to friends;
• Communicate. Once someone comments on your new status, a photo, or anything else – answer back. Moreover you need to make people love your brand and become active contributors and then brand ambassadors. 1/4 of search results on each big brand is UGC (User Generated Content).

Power Tip: When composing a message put the @ symbol and start typing the name of your business page to mention it, just like you mention someone on Twitter. This can be used as a signature to your updates.

2. Keep the page fresh and interesting.

People join your page hoping to receive some interesting stuff from you, so do not disappoint them. Facebookers usually prefer pictures, videos and links to plain text updates. Here is a comprehensive list of things that you should keep in mind to avoid losing your fans: don’t post too many updates; don’t automate your content; don’t be a duplicate of your website and don’t be boring. Your page wall is your social proof and a signal for people to get involved.

3. Cheat a bit.

Ask fellow staff & your team members to post “likes” and comments on each of your status updates to boost its rankings. Only status updates with 5 or more “likes” and comments show up in the Top News section. This will also make your wall look “alive”, which will inspire your fans to be more active on your page and participate in the conversation.

4. Fill in your page with media content.

• Upload pictures of your products/services, your office and your team at work to make your company easier to relate to;
• Encourage your fans to post  pictures of how they use your product;
• Upload pictures from each event you host and tag your fans there;
• Post videos of your team members talks;
• Show your products/services in action;
• Use video to respond to your fans (Bill Clinton frequently does video responses on his page).

5. Treat your fans.

You need to offer your fans something special and reward them. For instance 1-800-FLOWER Facebook page shows the discount code only when you click the “Like” button.

You can make some special offers, which are available to your Facebook fans only and are not announced outside of Facebook. It’s dead easy to reward your loyal fans by promoting them to the admins of your page, which will most likely turn them into enthusiastic brand ambassadors. Anyway, if there is some prominent fan – he should be publicly rewarded.

6. Send an update to Fans.

Direct messaging is a very powerful tool, but do not misuse it. Think twice before sending a message to all of your fans – it should be really valuable if you don’t want everyone to ignore it or get irritated.

Tip: Facebook allows you to send targeted updates. Think of a way you could use that feature for your business.

7. Ask your fans for help.

Now and then you can post a status update asking your fans to help build the community by suggesting your page to their friends. Just refer them to “Suggest to Friends” and “Share” links on your page and measure their response.

8. Build partnerships with other pages.

Notice that each page on Facebook has an “Add to my Page’s Favorites” button. When you do this, the logo of this page appears in a special “Favorite Pages” box on your own page. People see it and they might click the link to find out more about this page.

Your aim here is to build partnerships within your niche and be “favourited” as much as possible. Add to favorites pages that you like or that your business is related to and inform their owners about it with a wall post or a private message. Most likely you will be “favorited” back.

9. Use the applications.

There are a lot of crazy apps that you can use to promote yourself. You can even develop one of your own if your budget allows that. But how do the viral applications work in common?

You need something that people would willingly launch. This might be a game or a quiz or any other kind of dynamic content that most people love. Once a person has his score, bagde, vitual gift or any other result – the application publishes it to his wall so that all his friends could see it. The application should have a clear call to action, so that new people could easily get engaged. If the application has some kind of a High Score – people will play it again and again till they outrank their friends. You can (should) use the apps for sweepstakes and giveaways – people love them a lot.

10. Spy!

Yes! Always keep an eye on your competitors, especially on those outranking you. Check what they do and if you consider it to be a successful strategy – do the same. When they fail – try to avoid their mistakes. Anyway, you should always be informed on what others are doing to promote themselves.

11. Ads?

Indeed the most common way to promote your page. But before you use it, check out these stats:

Promoting Your Facebook Page Externally.

1. Facebook for webites.

The Facebook team has come a long way toward making your website more personalized and social. There is a list of great social plugins that can be easily embedded into your website and drive lots of new visitors: “Like Button” plugin, which is almost everywhere now, “Like Box”, which let’s you become a fan of the website without leaving the page, “Live Stream” which is often used while broadcasting some event. Try them on your website and see what happens next.

2. “Like” and “Share” buttons.

These two are so powerful that they require a separate paragraph. Once you own an online store – those buttons are of exceptional value. Whenever you find something that appeals to you in an online store – you no longer need to copy the URL and send it to your friends to ask for their opinion. Just press the “Like” button. They will see that and comment on it. This applies to photos, videos, games, blog posts, reviews – literally anything that can be found on the web.

3. Put a link everywhere.

Once you have a website, you put its address everywhere – e-mail signatures, forum signatures, twitter info, author bio section, LinkedIn profile, links section of your blog. Do exactly the same with your Facebook page. Highlight your Facebook presence at offline events, print it on your business card, use every opportunity you have.

Power Tip: Take some twitter auto follow script that follows a person whenever he has specific keywords in his tweet. Some percent of the people you’ve followed will follow you back. Write an engaging request to join your Facebook page and set it as an automatic direct message to people, who have just followed you. Being launched, this system will drive some new fans to your Facebook page on a regular basis.

4. Using video.

Almost every video sharing service allows you to annotate your videos with links. This is a great way to drive some new fans onto your Facebook page. You can make viral videos, funny videos, tutorials, explanations, presentations etc. and include a link to your Facebook page with a request to join. Works perfectly!

5. Other services.

There are a lot of websites where you can get some targeted audience. For instance, upon writing this guide I’ve gone though dozens of presentations at SlideShare and Scribd. There I’ve seen many referrals to join Facebook pages specialized on marketing, and I did join some of them truthfully as I enjoyed their presentations. Examine carefully all the websites where you post information or showcase your services and think of the way you could refer people to your Facebook page.

Power Tip: In case you have some kind of a digital product – create a torrent with some demos, name it with trending keywords and upload to all torrent trackers you can find. In the info or in the comments section add a link to your Facebook page. Then go to your analytics and watch your numbers grow.

Wheew… That’s the end of my guide. Sure there’s a lot more to add, but I tried to keep my tactics brief, to leave some space for your imagination. I’m sure each of you can invent lots of fantastic ways to use Facebook for SMM. I am open for any questions, shoot!

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Blog Post Recycling – Get it Done Right!

Syndicated From: Search Engine Journal http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/KS0_7O5Gcgo/

When you start to become a power blogger over time you will realize that some of your blog posts have a tremendous amount of web traction and others simply don’t. You will also realize that eventually at some point you will want to push your blog posts out a bit further too really increase your potential visitors and also your website link building efforts. Some of your blog posts most likely hit upon some amazing topics in your industry that others can really use so why not spread the love a bit further to really hit your audience.

If you teach your community what you know and understand over time you can really position yourself as an authority figure in your industry. First you have to put yourself in the mind set of recycling old material so you can simplify your efforts as much as possible.

Recycling blog post content is a perfectly fine effort as long as you do it tastefully and don’t spam the search engines. Paying a writer to rewrite 500 versions of a blog post is not a tasteful approach and could hurt you in the long run of marketing yourself or your business.

You are going to want to take some of your most important or trafficked blog posts to reformat and rewrite so they are completely unique with new body and title. You don’t want to duplicate the content exactly but rather make it so the search engines view it as something completely new and different. The article should not be centered on your business and should stay purely information based.

Here are some effective ways to recycle your old blog posts:

Article Directories:

Rewrite your blog posts so they are at least 500 words long and add to the meatiness of the argument and re-submit them to your favorite article directories. There is no shortage of article directories out there so pick some of your favorites.

EzineArticles.com is one of my favorites but you can really pick your own. Article directories have been around for a great deal of time and there are some out there that are very good. However, there are also some out there that are very spammy so be careful which article directories you end up submitting your articles into so that the search engines don’t look at you in a whole new negative light.

Document Sharing Sites:

Document sharing websites (such as Slideshare.net or Docstoc.com ) have become a very important part of spreading any business message. People patrol those websites to find good credible sources that can help them really educate themselves on a variety of different topics. The great thing about the document sharing websites is that they can be used as widgets on other people’s websites which they often do.

Newsletters:

If you write blog posts 2 or 3 times per/week and you don’t recycle those into a newsletter you are missing out on a huge potential. Some of the cloud based email marketing software programs, such as Constant Contact now index newsletters right into the search engines.

Many have the ability to drop the newsletter into social media networks and even directly into search results so you now have another possibility for others to bump into your material. Set up a regularly scheduled newsletter that goes out once per/week and use your old blog posts to construct it.

In today’s internet marketing world you could easily find yourself occupying a majority of your day with a variety of marketing efforts for your business. At some point it is important to really become efficient with your efforts and stretching some of your writing abilities will simply be a must. Writing can get very time consuming but if you play your cards right you can really take a well written blog post and stretch it out quite far. The bottom line is get your blog post recycling done the right way!

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Blog Post Recycling – Get it Done Right!

Read other posts by this Author: Nick Stamoulis

International CRO – Choosing the Wrong Colors and Other Mishaps

Syndicated From: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/QWsE_I4kFS0/international-cro

Posted by Sam Crocker

Good morning Mozzers!

Today we’re going to walk you through some rather basic but far-too-oft overlooked conversion factors specifically for international SEO. Anyone who has had the pleasure of using ecommerce sites in multiple countries may have noticed that as a general rule the sites look pretty similar if not identical. Today we are going to walk you through some of the pros and cons of this approach and how you might actually benefit from mixing things up for different audiences in different countries.

WARNINGS:

1. There is something to be said for having a similar site, brand, and feel that can be recognized all over the world.

2. Some CMS systems do not allow for easy changes to be made for different versions of the site.

3. With Google Translation, many folks are becoming less interested in having multiple sites anyhow.

4. More sites mean more potential problems and things to worry about.

Now, with these warnings out of the way let’s first jump into some of the potential benefits, and then look at some examples. 

Why Change a Good Thing?

Let’s consider an example company that has enjoyed a great deal of success in a country like the US and would like to become a major player in a country like Japan. Now, setting aside some of the logistical nightmares and translation issues we could stick with the templates and design from our original site in hopes of breaking into the Japanese market as a known quantity. After all, our model has worked wonders in the States and is likely to appeal to the Japanese market as well, right?

Well, maybe.

On the other hand, it’s probably worth considering a number of things about the site before we make a decision either way.

How Powerful is my Brand?

First, have we done our market research? It is all well and good if we have experienced success in one market, but it won’t necessarily mean that our brand name means anything to the new market. We don’t need to look too far outside of the field of SEO to realize that market shares and the "major players" can vary greatly from one country to another.

Now, we search marketers may tend to be biased towards Google in our SEO efforts, but we at least are all familiar with Bing and Yahoo! Meanwhile, some countries (China in the example) these "major brand names" may not mean anything. So banking on your "established brand" means very little when exploring a new market- be sure to do your research!

"I want a Pretty Site"

Secondly, what if up means down and down means up. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but it’s not so far off. Colors can mean totally different things from one country to another. And I’m not talking about horoscopes here! This isn’t a simple question of blue means serenity and purple means power there are much more pressing conversion factors to talk about here.

Let’s look at the implications of red and green and up and down. This factor was brought to my attention in a recent blogpost by the folks on the Yahoo Developer Blog and it is a really crucial point to consider- especially for conversions. In the US and most English speaking countries we are accustomed to a simple logic: Green = Good, Red = Bad. This holds from everything to traffic lights, to stock markets. However, in China and Korea the opposite is true.

These two screenshots were taken at the same time. The one on the left was taken from Yahoo! Finance whilst the one on the right was taken from Yahoo! Korea. As you can see, both images are showing the same data, although one of them appears with red arrows for the upward movement of the stock markets and the other appears with green arrows. This may be a simple illustration but it is easy enough to understand how the massive red letters you use to draw attention for falling prices on your US site could cause a bit of confusion.

Browser Usage

Finally, be mindful of the most common browsers in the country you are targeting. Compatibility across all browsers is always advisable but not always achievable. Although you may have built your site in the US with an understanding that most people would be using Chrome or Firefox the same may not be true everywhere else. In fact, as much as we bemoan Internet Explorer in the UK and the US it is still far and away the pre-eminent browser in Japan.

*REMEMBER THIS, because this bit of information may become even more relevant to you after a forthcoming casestudy by Tom which reveals some potentially massive Conversion losses from Internet Explorer users. I fear I may have said too much already, but be sure to watch this space for a link to the article.

    EDIT: Here is the case study on the Google Analytics Blog!

 Speaking the Language

Image: Engrish.com

My final suggestion for creating a site outside of your country comes with a word of warning. If this image looks ridiculous to native English speakers, imagine how silly a site built by one of us looks to a native mandarin speaker. Invest the time and effort to find the right person to build the site. If you are looking to take your ecommerce site to a global audience make sure you’re doing it the right way!

Do What Makes Sense!

As you may have realized, some of these seem like common sense but are far too often overlooked. If your site/brand doesn’t have any recognition to speak of make sure you’ve done your market research. It makes perfect sense for a brand like Amazon (without too many "offensive" colors used on any of their sites) to capitalize on their brand recognition across the web. There is no reason for them to invest too heavily in a redesign and a new name- because they can afford to acquire existing brands and rebrand.

However, if you have just enjoyed some excess in your home market and are thinking about taking your ecommerce platform to new heights be sure to consider the impact on usability.

Image: Cartoon Depot

Have I got the colors right? Have I considered the language issues? Have I thought about conversions and browser issues? And perhaps most importantly- have I got the funds to do this the right way at the moment?

If you can’t afford to make the switch properly, perhaps it is better to consider a "friendlier" market that is more similar to your current market and save your global dominance for a later experiment.

*Browser and Search Statistics from StatCounter

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Read other posts by this Author: Sam Crocker

Where Is Search Going: Google’s Johanna Wright

Syndicated From: Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/BuAS9u1oVuE/where-is-search-going-googles-johanna-wright-45983

With this post, I return to the topic I got sidetracked from a few months back: where is search going? I’ve had the chance to talk to Stefan Weitz from Microsoft, The Search author John Battelle and, this time around, I had the chance to pose a few questions to Johanna Wright, Google’s Product Management [...]

*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***

Read other posts by this Author: Gord Hotchkiss

Whiteboard Friday – 7 Ways to Take Advantage of Google’s Site Speed Algorithm (Pop-Up Video Style)

Syndicated From: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/72RMNR5oDu4/7-ways-to-take-advantage-of-googles-site-speed-algorithm-popup-video-style

Posted by Danny Dover

  Want happier website visitors and higher rankings? This week’s Whiteboard Friday is about how and why to speed up your website. It is more technical than previous videos so I tried to spice it up with an ode to one of my favorite canceled TV Shows, Pop-up Video. Can’t stand the content? At least the added commentary is entertaining. (It is the perfect plan ;-p)

7 Ways to Take Advantage of Google’s Site Speed Algorithm

The following are seven proven techniques well known websites use to boost their site speed.

1. Enable Gzip

Gzip is a open source compression algorithm that can used to compress your website’s content before your server sends the data to a visitor’s browser. This makes your servers job easier and makes pages load faster for your users. You can learn how to enable Gzip here.

2. Minify Javascript/CSS

Minify is the process (and software) for removing unnecessary formatting characters from code. This makes your files smaller and your visitors happier. You can learn all about this process here.

3. Use a CDN (Content Distribution Network)

CDNs are systems of interconnected server resources that spread content and assets around the globe to shorten the distance between server and prospective user. They are commonly used by the Web’s most popular websites. You can find a list of free CDNs here. Note: This is not a tip for beginners. Working with CDNs gets complicated very quickly.

4. Optimize Images

You can take advantage of the countless man hours that have been devoted to image compression and make your users happier by simply saving your images as the appropriate type. As a very general rule of thumb, I recommend saving photos as JPEGs and graphics as PNGs.

5. Use External Javascript/CSS

When a browser requests a website from a server it can only download a set number of files of the same type at any given point. While this isn’t true of all file types, it is a good enough reason to host applicable files on alternative subdomains. This is only recommended for sites where the pros of speed will outweigh the SEO cons of creating a new subdomain.

6. Avoid Using Excess Redirects

While redirects can be extremely useful, it is important to know that implementing them does force your servers to do slightly more work per applicable request. Always avoid redirect strings (301 -> 301 -> 200 or even worse 301 -> 302 -> 200) and use these tools sparingly.

7. Use Fewer Files

The most straightforward way to speed up your website is to simply use fewer files. Less files means less data. My favorite method of doing this is utilizing CSS sprites. You can read how popular websites are using this trick here.

Google’s Mission to Speed Up the Web

Fueled by the massive potential of the Internet, Googlers are working on many projects in their attempt to speed up the Web:

• Rewriting Internet Protocols – Starting at the foundation, teams at Google are rewriting the protocols that run the Internet in order to get faster performance.
• Creating a Public DNS – Google recently released a public DNS resource to help speed up DNS calls.
• Providing Fiber-optics for the Public – For a select few cities in the United States, Google will soon be offering ultra high-speed broadband networks for consumers.
• Encouraging Webmasters/SEOs to Speed Up Their Sites with a New Algorithm Update – Google spilled the beans about their one new aspect of their ranking algorithms by saying that site speed is now a ranking factor. This post explains how to take advantage of that.

If you have any other advice that you think is worth sharing, feel free to post it in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my SEOmoz profile under Danny. Thanks!

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Read other posts by this Author: Danny Dover

Living Content: It’s What People Want

Syndicated From: Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/B3NU3wI2rJk/living-content-its-what-people-want-46006

Most web content is barely alive, even when it is first written. It is pumped out by content mills, optimized and uploaded. This kind of bulk content is often referred to as backfill content. I prefer the term “landfill content.” Dead and rotting from day one.
In sharp contrast, living content is quality content. It is [...]

Read other posts by this Author: Nick Usborne

Getting All Employees Involved in Your Social Media Plan

Syndicated From: Search Engine Journal http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/yFhxeOgG6os/

Getting your entire company on-board with your social media strategy can help create an immediate impact in your social presence online. Instead of just one person trying to tackle creating a social brand, you can leverage all employees abilities and experience to make a bigger splash.

In order to make your entire company known, you should give everyone a voice. Here are a number of ways you can involve any and all employees who want to be social.

Meet the Team

The first way is by having an awesome meet the team page. Make sure everyone has a bio picture, so people can make a visual connection with each person within your organization. Also have links to all of the social profiles that they maintain and are active in. This will allow readers to start to follow and subscribe to each of their updates.

Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts

You should have some kind of way to manage all of the Twitter accounts and messages that communicate with your company. A product like CoTweet will allow you to add employees and give each of them permissions depending on their role with your social media strategy.

Display Team Tweets

I just purchased this premium WP plugin called Twitter Widget Pro that allows you to add Twitter updates to your blog for multiple Twitter accounts. This is perfect for company that is looking to display updates for multiple employees within your organization.

Facebook Updates & Comments

Make sure that everyone is responding to your company social profile updates. If you are going to be hosting an event, let everyone know that you are looking forward to it. This will show that all employees are getting involved and want to connect with others.

About the Author

Whenever an employee write a blog post, make sure you promoting their self brand by adding their bio picture, links to their bio page and social media profiles. If you read a number of industry blogs, you will probably start to notice certain people that you really like to follow. When you see their picture, it makes pay more attention to their content and what they are saying.

Respond to Comments

If an employee writes a post, make sure they are following up with anyone who responds with a comment. It is important for the person who wrote the post to respond. Especially if someone asks a question about something that was written, if the author can clarify or answer their question, it will show that each author will respond if people comment.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Getting All Employees Involved in Your Social Media Plan

Read other posts by this Author: Mark Thompson

Don’t Fall Into the Trap of A/B Testing Minutiae

Syndicated From: SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/Tg9w1vqmC9E/dont-fall-into-the-trap-of-ab-testing-minutiae

Posted by randfish

Jason Cohen recently authored a post on A/B testing that deserves both broader awareness and a deeper dive. Most of us in the online marketing world are aware of the power A/B tests can bring through improved click-through, sign-up and conversion rates. Getting a higher percentage of visitors to a page to take a desired action is powerful stuff.

The process by which we hypothesize, design, create and run testing, however, is fraught with peril. And, one of the least obvious, but most insiduous potential pitfalls is actually what we choose to test.

Visualizing the “Local Minimum” Issue

It’s definitely interesting and sometimes worthwhile to test individual elements of a landing page, but it’s often not appropriate at the beginning of a landing page or product’s life. As Conversion Rate Experts points out, the “let’s throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks” approach can have a small impact. Researching the questions visitors have and answering them effectively can make a world of difference.

The problem is, it’s so very tempting to be seduced by an easy answer.

The Tantalizing Tease of Testing Minutiae

It’s likely that many of you have read case studies like the ones below:

• Changing Button Color from Red to Green = 72% Improvement from Dan McGrady
• 11% Conversion Rate Increase with a “Commitment Checkbox” from Conversion Voodoo
• How Adding “It’s Free” Increased Conversion by 28% from Soocial
• Human Photos Double Conversion Rate from Carsonified
• The infamous Twitter Following Command Test from Dustin Curtis

In all of these, some simple change accounted for big increases in click-through or conversion rate, leading to widespread praise and sharing. The problem is – they’re the exception, not the rule. In fact, that’s precisely why they’re newsworthy and get so many mentions. That’s not to say you shouldn’t read them or shouldn’t take away value from the examples (you definitely should). It’s just that the mentality of the small change can create a misleading mindset for marketers.

Very few websites have the experience of changing a button color or altering a headline or fiddling with some copy and seeing huge improvements in conversion rate. If you have good reason to believe you’re an outlier, go for it, just be cautious – it’s not just the fact that small scale changes can have less positive of an impact. They also cost time and resources that you can’t afford.

Some Simple, Compelling Math to Keep You Out of the Weeds

Let’s say you’re pretty good at conversion rate optimization – A/B and multivariate tests are relatively easy for you to perform and you’ve got solid instincts around them. And let’s also say that you get reasonably decent traffic to your landing/test pages – in the several thousand range each day.

Even under these ideal conditions, massive problems emerge.

Knowing that each test takes a substantial amount of time to get high confidence of accuracy and that smaller tests (with less needle-moving potential) take MORE time is a pretty convincing reason to start out with the big ideas and big changes first. But, it’s not the only logic behind this. Let’s say you find a page/concept you’re relatively happy with and start testing the little things – optimizing around the local minimum. You might run tests for 4-6 months, eek out a 5% improvement in your overall conversion rate and feel pretty good.

Until…

You run another big, new idea in a test and improve further. Now you know you’ve been wasting your time optimizing and perfecting a page whose overall concept isn’t as good as the new, rough, unoptimized page you’ve just tested for the first time.

It’s easy to see how you can get lost in this process and frustrated, too. That’s why my recommendation (and the advice I get from lots of talented CRO folks) is to start with the big ideas and big projects, nail down the grand plans worth testing, let your audience pick a winner and then try to tweak, tune and improve.

What You Should Be Testing

What do I mean when I say “big ideas” and “overhauls?” Luckily, 37Signals provided a terrific example yesterday with their Basecamp Homepage Redesign:

They recorded a 14% improvement from new vs. old and can now decide whether they want to try another innovative concept or start optimizing the little things on this version. And while the numbers don’t sound as compelling as a few of the bigger ones from the small tests, I’d argue they’re going about things exactly in the right way. Perhaps a “little change” to the old version would have improved things quite substantially, but with this new version, they’ve got a higher base conversion rate and can benefit from every change that much more.

Another great example is the case study Conversion Rate Experts did for SEOmoz itself. That test gave us a 52% improvement in conversion rate from the PRO landing page. As an addendum, in April of this year, we tested an in-house created, shorter, less story-like landing page that we all hoped would beat out the old long-form version. After a few weeks of testing, it lost out. Later this summer, we’ll be trying something completely different in an attempt to beat our current best.

The process to follow for conversion rate optimization and testing was well described in Stephen Pavlovich’s post – The Definitive How-to Guide for CRO. His PDF guide, in particular, made this dead easy:

Step 1 of 4 in the process

Follow those steps, don’t get lost in the minutiae, and you’ll be on your way to exceptional results - no thousand monkeys with typewriters required.

p.s. I’d also suggest checking out this long but worthwhile post on stats for usability (and A/B) tests.

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Read other posts by this Author: randfish