SEO, Design and Marketing Blog

Subscribe To This BlogWelcome to SEO, Design and Marketing, a weekly blog by 10 year web veteran Erik Cunningham. Please feel free to comment and share your thoughts and experiences regarding search engine optimization, graphic design and internet marketing.

WordPress Plugins Say ‘No’ to NoFollow Links

September 6, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

I read two recent articles that drew my attention to my blog linking practices, Get Links Now: Make a Difference, Make Connections, a Search Engine Watch article by Sage Lewis and Quit Hogging All The Links!, by Dr. Pete at User Effect.

I never made a conscious effort to nofollow links from commenters but WordPress made the decision for me when I installed it on my server. I carefully moderate the comments submitted to my blogs so publishing link spam isn’t an issue for me.

Use WordPress Plugins to Remove NoFollow Links

After reading Sage and Dr. Pete’s posts, I decided to take their advice and start spreading some ‘link love’. I enjoy being a part of the SEO blogging community and regularly post comments on other blogs. To encourage others to do the same, I removed all of the rel=nofollow attributes from the comments section of my posts.

Because I have a web programming background, I was able to alter the WordPress code manually to remove the nofollow attribute. For those who are less code savvy, WordPress recommends one of two plugins, DoFollow and Follow URL.

Thanks to Sage and Dr. Pete for bringing this problem to my attention and to all of the other bloggers out there sharing the love.

Comments (3) — Blogging — Tags: , , ,

SEO Strategies from San Jose SES 2008 - Day 4

August 28, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

Session Photo from SES 2008 San Jose Day 4My fourth and final day at San Jose SES 2008 included a mixture of topics including local search, free SEO tools, and strategies that many SEO’s don’t consider when optimizing and marketing their websites.

These particular sessions covered a lot of information so I’ll display my notes and observations in bullet form. Okay, the truth is that I’m just plain lazy today but bullets is bullets.

Day 4 Agenda

Local & More – Special Kelsey Group Presentation: Local 2.0 – The Evolution of Local Search

10:15am-11:15am

  • Major players are using maps, videos, ratings and reviews and marketing to Google
  • 72% of consumers research online but 95% purchase offline
  • Link to your local listings from your website
  • Link to online citations from your Google Maps listing
  • Make your local listings stand out through upgrades and recommendations/ratings (+80% conversions)
  • Videos on results page attract 220% more clicks in SERPs
  • Post a video on YouTube, embed it in a dedicated page on your website with text and tags similar to the YouTube page, and link to the YouTube video from the dedicated page
  • Google AdWords offers print, radio and TV ads at http://www.google.com/adwords/traditionalmedia/

Just the Basics – Fast, Free and Easy Tools to Get You Going

11:30am-12:30pm

The Best Kept Secrets to Search

1:30pm-2:30pm

  • Combine PPC with traditional marketing strategies for higher conversion rates
  • Use special characters and local phone numbers in PPC ad copy to attract more attention
  • Syndicate rewritten versions of articles for backlinks
  • Local search is dominating SERPs above the fold
  • Search the web for your URL citations that aren’t hyperlinked and request edit

Searching For Jobs in Search: Starting and Advancing Your Career in the Industry

2:45pm-3:45pm

Comments (0) — SEO — Tags: , , ,

Day 3 at SES Conference & Expo 2008 San Jose

August 21, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

Day 3 SES 2008 San JoseOn my third day at SES Conference & Expo 2008, the sessions I attended were focused primarily upon organic search engine optimization and social media.

The day’s sessions were a large contrast to my experiences on Day 2 which revolved around search marketing and pay-per-click advertising campaigns.

Here’s an overview of what I learned.

Day 3 Agenda

Organic - SEO Through Blogs & Feeds

10:30am - 11:45pm

Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing opened the session with a description of his company’s experiences with toprankblog.com. He recommended that bloggers let their goals for their blog drive their content. He also suggested that bloggers should find ways to automate the optimization of their content as much as possible and promote their blog by linking to and commenting on other blogs in their community.

The panel preferred WordPress to any other blogging platform 3 to 1 but recommended that bloggers choose the platform with the highest availability of tech support.

Daron Babin from Webmaster Radio gave a different SEO perspective. He admitted that he hates blogs, and opts for article syndication and RSS feeds instead. When promoting his company through feeds his favorite outlets and tools are Feedburner and MeFeedia.

Searcher - Searcher Behavior Research Update

1:00pm - 2:15pm

The focus of two of the four presenters at this session, Pavan Lee from Microsoft and Bill Barnes from Enquiro Search, was the branding benefit or “lift” created by the presence of a brand’s name in multiple locations on the same search results page. “Lift” was defined as a percentage increase in the likelihood of memory recall and recognition of the brand by internet users in the study.

Enquiro’s study revealed that the presence of a brand name in the top position of both paid and organic search results led to a 16% lift in brand association and 8% increase in purchase consideration in non-branded searches. The study also revealed that brands, large or small, can benefit by being associated with other popular brands in the same industry.

In Microsoft’s study, Pavan revealed that the appearance of a brand in organic search results can lead to a 30% increase in brand awareness when combined with both text and display ads which is a larger increase than the sum of each of the placements individual effectiveness.

Organic - Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

2:45pm - 4:00pm

The main conclusion drawn from this session on duplicate content was that duplicate content can be created unintentionally in an infinite number of ways and corrected by 301 redirects. Best practice suggestions for avoiding duplicate content included the removal of session ids from internal link URLs, the use of related plugins for blogs like WordPress, and the implementation of server rewrites in cases when multiple paths lead to the same data (eg. paths involving locations).

Social Media - Facebook, Feeds and Micro-Blogging

4:15pm - 5:30pm

The day’s final session was an overview of the features and benefits of popular social media and micro-blogging sites like Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed. The most notable recommendations from the session were from Andy Beal and Dave Snyder. Andy advised that, even if brand owners don’t have the time to participate in activities on these sites at the present time, they should claim their brands as a defensive measure.

Dave suggested that social media and micro-blogging sites are great tools for “online reputation management” and that, in addition to monitoring what others are saying about a brand, brand owners should be careful what they say when participating in “conversations” on these sites.

That brings day 3 at SES Conference & Expo 2008 to a close. Please watch for my final report on this year’s conference in San Jose in the next couple of days.

Comments (2) — SEO — Tags: , , ,

Tips from Day 2 - Search Engine Strategies 2008 San Jose

August 20, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

Day 2 San Jose Convention CenterOn Tuesday, Day 2 of Search Engine Strategies 2008 in San Jose, I was able to mix things up a little bit. At the conference, I attended sessions related to PPC and web analytics. Between sessions, I had lunch with an old friend from college. In the evening I rounded out my day at the Google Dance.

All in all, it was a great day - very social and very educational. Here is a summary of my experiences.

Day 2 Agenda

Measuring Success - Measuring Success in a 2.0 World

11:00am - 12:15pm

Avinash Kaushik, an author, blogger, and analytics evangelist from Google, opened the morning’s session by describing Web 2.0’s effect on the creation, distribution and consumption of content on the internet. In the world of Web 1.0, publishers distributed their content to web users through controlled channels which made the consumption of that content easy to moderate and easy to track.

The emergence of RSS feeds and content syndication in Web 2.0 broke this model and took the control of content distribution and consumption out of publishers’ hands and put it into the hands of the web community. Avinash describes this transfer of power as, “different but better”.

In a Web 2.0 world, content monitoring and tracking have become far more difficult. Unique visitor and page load statistics no longer carry the same significance. Avinash recommends that publishers find new ways of measuring success. He uses tools such as Feedburner, Google Analytics and Technorati to monitor the results of his publishing efforts and focuses on data that reveals customer loyalty and subscriber base.

Sponsored Session: Omniture - 5 Things No One Will Tell You About SEM

2:45pm - 3:45pm

Although sponsored, my second session of the day was high on content and surprisingly low on salesmanship. Kudos to Omniture for providing us with useful, non-proprietary search marketing information. Here are the five topics the presenters discussed:

  1. Direct navigation and one and two keyword searches are on the rise. Are these factors related?
  2. Small advertisers should focus their PPC campaign efforts on the top two or three search engines with the largest marketshare in their geographic area. Choosing good keywords and building relevant landing pages are a must!
  3. SEM doesn’t work for everything. Creating PPC campaigns for products with latent demand can be a waste of time. When marketing new technologies with descriptive words and acronyms that public is unfamiliar with, display and vertical advertising is a better strategy for success.
  4. Traffic from search engine “content network” PPC advertising is about 30% lower quality than normal PPC search traffic. Google and Yahoo! use it as an upsell, but it may not be in the best interest of the advertiser.
  5. Some of competitors’ search engine marketing activities are easily researched. Simple keyword searches can reveal what terms competitors are buying and following the paid links will show you their landing page strategies.

Measuring Success - Identify, Analyze, Act: SEM by the Numbers

4:00pm - 5:15pm

The last session of the day was a bit dry, but I did manage to pick up some pointers about search analytics.

In addition to the standard bounce rate, average time on site, and page views statistics present in most analytics packages, Michael Stebbins from Market Motive, recommended that you find a program or means to measure conversion rates, cost per visitor and revenue per visitor. The resulting data doesn’t have to be completely accurate, as long as it reveals “trends” related to PPC campaigns so you can identify which ad groups perform the best, and which perform the worst. Once you can determine this, you should cut the top 10% of your poor performing ads.

Brett Crosby from Google recommended that to best track and analyze your Adwords campaigns you should configure goals and funnels in Google Analytics, create custom dashboards to organize your data, and set up custom email reports that relate to the job functions at your organization.

Google Dance

7:00pm - 11:00pm

The Google Dance was great as always. Lots of food, free t-shirts and free drinks, and plenty of entertainment. Thanks again Google for being such a generous host!

That about wraps up Day 2 at SES 2008 San Jose. Two down, but two more on the way so stay tuned!

Comments (1) — SEO — Tags: , , , , ,

Search Marketing Tips from SES 2008 San Jose - Day 1

August 18, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

Day 1 View From San Jose MarriottThis week, I’ll be attending my fourth Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in San Jose, CA. I’ve been blessed to attend the conference every two years since 2002 and have enjoyed it every time. I’m staying at the Marriott which shares a wall with the San Jose Convention Center. The close proximity allows me to run up to my room between conference sessions (and blog) if I want to, which is great.

I passed on the SES Conference Welcome & Orientation this year. I figured, “If I don’t know what’s going on here by my fourth trip, I have bigger problems to worry about”.

Speaking of problems, I noticed there weren’t any free conference t-shirts in the goody bags this year. I better hang on to my old ones from previous years. They might be collector’s items!

I did receive two free books however which more than makes up for the missing shirt. “Made to Stick” by Chip Heath & Dan Heath and “Against the Machine, Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob” by Lee Siegel were both included with our conference materials. I look forward to reading them both in the weeks to come.

Day 1 Keynote PresentationThe conference this week offers five different search engine strategies related tracks that attendees can follow - World View, Search 2.5, Search Industry Track, What’s Next? and ClickZ Track. After looking at the conference schedule, I plan on attending sessions from at least four of the five tracks offered.

Here’s a quick overview of my experiences on Monday (day 1) of SES 2008 San Jose and some tips from the sessions I attended.

Day 1 Agenda

What’s Next? - More Customers, Fewer Costs - Why Marketing to the ‘Long Tail’ Makes Sense

9:45am - 11:00am

I was surprisingly wide awake for this first session. Here’s what I took away from the presenters:

  • At least 30-40% of all internet searches are made with “local” intent
  • Long tail search terms are cheap options for paid placement and easy to rank well for in SERPs because of limited competition
  • Many websites (especially ecommerce sites) receive the majority of their traffic from long tail search terms
  • Conversion rates are higher for long tail search terms than generic search terms because they are more specific to the user’s intent
  • SEOs can optimize for the long tail search terms through dedicated content pages combined with internal link anchor text and by including the terms near back-links in blogs, local business listings and Google Maps

What’s Next? - Semantic Search: How Will It Change Our Lives?

11:15am - 12:30pm

I’m new to the topic of semantic search but I left the session with a better understanding of the general concept behind it. Semantic search is intended to be an improvement upon today’s standard of keyword search. I thought Erik Collier from Ask summed up the philosophy behind semantic search best when he said that users shouldn’t have to rephrase or reorder their query to get the results they’re looking for.

Semantic search will one day allow searchers to use natural language in their search queries rather than “caveman talk” as Kevan Ryan, the session moderator so eloquently described it. In the next few years, queries like, “Bruce Willis Movies” will be replaced by, “What movies has Bruce Willis starred in?”.

From an SEO perspective, semantic search may shift the focus of code and content from keywords to context. Dust off your thesaurus boys and girls. It looks like SEOs will be using a lot more synonyms over the next 5-10 years.

Another important element of semantic search, according to Amit Kumar from Yahoo! Search is the delivery of structured data content from website publishers to the search engines in the form of Microformats and RDF(a) Markup. RD… what? I’m not familiar with either of these formats but I hope to publish a post on the subject after I’ve done some research.

Keynote Panel - How Much Search is Enough?

1:30pm - 2:30pm

Day 1 Keynote SEO Funding SourcesUnfortunately, this panel discussion on locating and securing funding sources for search marketing didn’t afford me much more than a couple of good photo opportunities.

The session did feature an all-star panel. But listening to a group of SEOs discuss financial issues on the first day of the conference wasn’t enough to maintain my interest. Sitting in a low lit room right after lunch didn’t help matters either.

What’s Next? - Everything But Google: Alternative Search Advertising Options

2:45pm - 4:00pm

I really enjoyed this session on advertising alternatives to Google AdWords. I was most impressed by Sage Lewis’ entertaining, practical and straight-forward presentation of what alternatives for paid advertising exist and which offer the lowest CPC (cost-per-conversion).

From the study results that Sage showed us, the three best advertising solutions from a CPC perspective were Looksmart, Ask, and SuperPages. The “Big 3″, Google, Yahoo! and MSN offered more traffic, but at a much higher cost per conversion.

Sage wrapped up his presentation by recommending that advertisers run tests of their own with different providers and seek referrals from colleagues that have done the same.

Keynote Presentation - Lee Siegel, Author of “Against the Machine”

4:30pm - 5:30pm

I skipped this last presentation so I could organize the day’s information while it was still clear in my head. And as I mentioned earlier in this post, we received this book as part of our conference materials and I was afraid that the author might give away the ending.

That’s it for Day 1 at SES 2008 San Jose. I hope to post my experiences from Day 2 tomorrow or the day after.

Comments (0) — SEO — Tags: , , ,

Geo Sitemap Tutorial with KML Sample Code

August 15, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

I recently submitted my first Geo Sitemap to Google and thought I would put together a short tutorial to help others do the same.

Special thanks to Martijn Beijk’s The definitive guide on using KML and sitemaps for SEO and Mike Blumenthal’s Google Maps: KML for authority and ranking? for getting me started.

The process requires the creation of two documents. The first document is a “KML” file. A KML (Keyhole Markup Language) file is used to display geographic data in mapping utilities like Google Maps and Google Earth.

KML Sample Code

Here is some optimized KML sample code that you can copy and paste into a text editor like NotePad to get you started:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<kml xmlns=”http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2″
xmlns:atom=”http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom”>
<Document>
<name>Office Location</name>
<atom:author>
<atom:name>Your Name or Company Name Here</atom:name>
</atom:author>
<atom:link href=”http://www.yourdomainhere.com/” />
<Placemark>
<name>Your Company Name - Your County, Your State Here</name>
<description>
<![CDATA[
<h1><a href="http://www.yourdomainhere.com/">Your Company Name Here</a></h1>
<p>Your Full Address Here</p>
<p>Your company description here.</p>
<p>Your phone number and email address here.</p>
]]>
</description>
<Point>
<coordinates>YourCoordinate1Here,YourCoordinate2Here,0</coordinates>
</Point>
</Placemark>
</Document>
</kml>

As you can see, I’ve included the words “Your” and “Here” in the areas of the KML sample code you’ll want to customize to match the unique details of your business.

Finding values for “YourCoordinate1Here” and “YourCoordinate2Here” is a little bit tricky but don’t fret. Here are the steps required to obtain these values.

Step 1

Enter your full address into Google Maps and click the “Search Maps” button.

Step 2

Locate your address marker on the map, position your mouse pointer near (but not directly on) the marker, right-click your mouse and select “Directions from here”.

Step 3

You’ll see two numbered coordinates appear under “Get Directions” in the left-hand frame of your screen. Copy these coordinates and paste them into your KML document, replacing “YourCoordinate1Here,YourCoordinate2Here”.

Step 4

Here’s the “tricky” part. Unfortunately, the two coordinates you just pasted into your KML code are in the wrong order, but don’t panic. Simply swap the positions of the two coordinates in your code and you’ll be all set.

Once you’re satisfied with the content of your KML code, save your document as .kml (eg. “office-location.kml”) and upload it to your web server.

But wait, you’re not done! You still have one more document to create.

Geo Sitemap Sample Code

Now that you’ve successfully created your KML file, you need to create a Geo Sitemap file that tells Google where your KML file is located on your web server.

Here is some Geo Sitemap sample code. Again, cut and paste the sample code below into a text editor like NotePad.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″
xmlns:geo=”http://www.google.com/geo/schemas/sitemap/1.0″>
<url>
<loc>http://www.yourdomainhere.com/office-location.kml</loc>
<geo:geo>
<geo:format>kml</geo:format>
</geo:geo>
</url>
</urlset>

Customize the Geo Sitemap sample code above to reflect your domain name and KML file name. When you’re done, save the document as .xml (eg. “geo-sitemap.xml”) and upload it to your web server.

Submit Your Geo Sitemap to Google

Now that you’ve created your KML file and Geo Sitemap file, it’s time to submit them to Google. Log in to Google Webmaster Tools and add your domain name to the list of sites in your Dashboard. Once you’ve verified your site, return to your Dashboard and select the “Sitemaps” link from the left-column navigation.

Next, locate and click the “Add a Sitemap” link from within the page content. On the following page, open the “Choose type…” drop-down and select “Add Geo Sitemap” from the list of options. Enter the URL of your Geo Sitemap file (.xml) and click the “Add Geo Sitemap” button.

Congratulations, you’re done!

Geo Sitemaps and SEO

The SEO effects of Geo Sitemaps on local search remains to be seen. I’ll keep you posted on my studies and observations. If you have any information regarding the SEO value of Geo Sitemaps, please leave a comment below.

Comments (1) — SEO — Tags: , ,

A Brief Overview of XML Sitemaps

August 13, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

Most SEOs are already familiar with the benefits of and steps required to create and submit an XML Sitemap to search engines but I thought I would cover it briefly to lay the groundwork for my next topic, Geo Sitemaps.

An XML Sitemap is a great way to keep search engines informed of additions and changes to your website. Here is an example of the XML code contained within an XML Sitemap:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<urlset xmlns=”http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84″>
<url>
<loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2008-08-13</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>1.0</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.yourdomain.com/subpage.html</loc>
<lastmod>2008-08-13</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

You’ll want to repeat the code located between and including the <url> and </url> tags for every page of your website. Here is a brief description of the elements located between the URL tags.

<loc> is the URL of your webpage.

<lastmod> refers to the last date the webpage was edited. The accepted format is yyyy-mm-dd.

<changefreq> is an estimate of how often the content of the page is updated. Accepted values include: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and never.

<priority> is the importance you assign to the page in relation to other pages of your site where “.01″ is least important and “1.0″ is most important.

You can build your own XML Sitemap with a text editor like NotePad. Save the text file as “sitemap.xml”, upload it to your website and submit it to search engines through Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Live Webmaster Center.

Comments (1) — SEO — Tags: , , ,

Hats Off to BlackHat360

August 5, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

I stumbled across a new SEO site today that made me laugh out loud. The site is called BlackHat360 and it’s just what it sounds like. The first post on their homepage dated August 2, 2008 states,

“BlackHat360 is a site dedicated to all things BlackHat. For those joining us that don’t know, blackhat is a type of SEO or Search Engine Optimization that is often misunderstood.”

I laughed at this statement because it reminded me of a scene from Star Wars Episode III when Emperor Palpatine described the dark side of the Force to Anakin Skywalker.

“If one is to understand the great mystery, one must study all its aspects, not just the domestic narrow view of the Jedi. If you wish to become a complete and wise leader, you must breath a larger view of the Force.”

I often joke with SEO colleagues about black hat SEO being the Dark Side - warning them, “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny”.  With categories like, “Google spamming techniques and discussions” and “Promotional methods, link spamming, you name it”, the dark path definitely dominates BlackHat360’s forums.

One thing that does not dominate the site’s forums however, is intelligence. By posting all of their BlackHat strategies in a public forum, they’re giving away their hand to the search engines.  If I were Matt Cutts, I’d be on the site every day taking detailed notes to help improve Google’s anti-spam algorithms.

Or maybe, just maybe, Matt Cutts is already there… Maybe Google built the site for that very purpose.  BlackHat SEOs beware!

All conspiracy theories aside, I titled this post, “Hats Off to BlackHat360″ not because I honor their intelligence or approve of their content, but because I find their brazen and open defiance of the search engines comical.  And while I admire their fearlessness, the one message I’ll take away from their site is, “don’t try this at home”.

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One Small Post for Man

July 31, 2008 by Erik Cunningham

Welcome.  For my inaugural post, I thought I would share a little bit about myself and my goals for this blog.

I started my internet career in 1999 as a web designer.  Since then, I’ve added web programming, product development, management, copywriting, SEO and search marketing to my resume.  I caught my first glimpse of SEO at Search Engine Strategies 2002 in San Jose and have attended the conference on two other occasions.  I would definitely recommend the conference to any aspiring SEO professional.

Because I’ve divided my time and practice over the past decade between web programming and web marketing, I possess a more well rounded understanding of SEO, design and marketing than most.  I’m not trying to blow my own horn mind you.  I’m simply providing you with reasons to trust my observations and recommendations.

I spend my days combing SEO blogs, articles, news headlines and discussion boards and my nights designing, testing, blogging and writing.  My goal for this blog is to post cutting edge, informative, trustworthy and entertaining information based upon my studies.  I hope you’ll join me.

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