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April 30, 2008

Real and Imagined Errors in Google Sitemap Feeds

When you upload your XML sitemap feed to your server -- especially if it's GZipped -- don't expect it to look pretty. I got a nervous call from a client because when he called the XML feed URL in his browser, he saw this:

While it looks like an error, it's really not. Not in the traditional sense, at least. The error here is that your browser (in this case, Firefox) isn't able to view the file without a little help -- specifically, a stylesheet that tells it how it should look to human viewers.

The bottom line is that this message doesn't mean that engines can't read your XML feed -- only that you can't see it. To see whether Google can process it, for example, check the Sitemap Summary report. For some reason, this report isn't in the main GWT left nav. To find it, you need to click the "Details" link at the far right of the Sitemap Overview report. When you click that link, here's what you see:

Real sitemap errors do exist, even in the example I used above. In this case, I've inadvertently included in the sitemap a URL that I also excluded via robots.txt. So I'm sending Google a mixed message there. Fortunately, the robots.txt file overrides the URL's inclusion in the sitemap, so it ends up being more of a gentle nudge than a true, crippling error. If the error doesn't specifically say that the sitemap is invalid and unreadable, then it's probably not.

Posted by erik at 8:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

April 24, 2008

Foundational SEO: Branching Out With Best Practices Keyword Research

In a recent interview with Top SEOs , I was asked a question about the continuously changing SEO environment.

I replied, "I believe there are some foundational things about Search Engine Optimization that have not changed much over the last 10 years. Staying true to some of these core, foundational concepts of best practices SEO has played a significant role in the success of Intrapromote."

I encountered a very good example of this while reviewing one of our client campaigns.

We have an ecommerce client with a robust store offering a little over 500 products. With a list of specific product names in hand, I tasked our keyword research experts to dig deep into keyword research to see how people are currently searching for all 500 of their products.

When I say "dig deeper", I often use the word picture with clients of keyword research being like a large tree. Comprehensive keyword research starts at the base of the tree with broad keywords, then considers every single major branch of the tree and (here's the comprehensive part) every single large, medium and small branch connected to these major branches.

Our specific search behavior questions in this case:

1. Are search engine users searching for variations of these product names?
2. If so, what are these variations and what is the potential of driving additional traffic to the client's site by targeting these variations?

The end result of our comprehensive keyword research? Going down every major and minor tree branch revealed exactly 224 variations of the 500 product names being used at search engines. We estimate that these 224 variations account for over 2,000 user searches every single day at search engines. Since traffic is what we're after, each of these variations have now become new targets for our SEO, Link Building, and Social Media Marketing efforts for this client.

So, done correctly and regularly, comprehensive keyword research is a great example of a foundational SEO activity that has not changed very much. We even found that for one major brand utilizing various cartridge add-ons, search engine users don't search for "[product name] cartridges", they search for "[product name] software". Good to know that inquiring Googlers may be headed to a competitors site if our client's site is not optimized and performing well for variations of this product name along with "software".

Bottom line reminders:

1. A cardinal sin of keyword research is to not look for every possible variation of your product names.
2. Never, ever assume how people search for your products or services.

Posted by doug at 11:17 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

April 23, 2008

How to Take Advantage of the How-To Video Craze

As reported in today's NYT article, "Making Money, the How-To Way," by Miguel Helft, how-to videos are growing in popularity, and even "folding towels so they look just so" can be a trendy video subject.

So why do people like how-to videos anyway? Maybe they want to learn something, but many times these videos are great entertainment too. My all-time how-to favorite is Video Jug's "How to Fight a Duel," which could come in handy the next time I need to fend off my neighbor's dog.

I really can't stand the reality shows on TV, and if you are selective online you can find some real how-to video gems, like "How to Fight a Bear," or the more mellow "How to Care for Puppies."

Marketing using how-to videos can be a new avenue for companies to explore. Users probably won't enjoy an overt pitch, and since the idea is to get the videos to spread virally, setting up an "expert" series is a great idea. Say your company sells cowboy boots. If you shoot a series of videos on "How Acme Cowboy boots are made," you can present a short piece on the quality and uniqueness of your product. You could even create videos on "How-to select the right cowboy boots to go with your outfits," optimize them (video submission sites like ExpertVillage.com provide sections for written summaries), embed them on your site and more.

Now there must be a how-to video on how to make a good how-to video...

Posted by lisa at 5:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Update on Google Showing Excluded URLs as Sitelinks

A little over a month ago, I wrote about Google showing robots-excluded URLs as Sitelinks. Here's a shot of what Google showed for the query [seo speedwagon] in mid-March:

The ip login link was (and is) excluded via robots.txt. A month prior (in February), a link to one of our monthly archives -- a page with the robots "noindex" meta tag -- appeared as a Sitelink also.

Since then, the SERP has been cleaned up. I use the passive voice because I don't exactly know who to thank. Either the algo picked it up on its own, or someone hand-washed it. Either way, it looks better now:

I'm not sure if we're an isolated case, so if you have any examples of excluded URLs still showing up in Sitelinks, please let us know in the comments.

Posted by erik at 8:12 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

April 9, 2008

Content is King, But Who Has Time to Read it All?

With all the writing I do comes hours of associated research. While this is usually enjoyable, time is of the essence, and it's important to have a few shortcuts to help wade through all the PDFs, articles and brochures I read daily.

For years I've used a product called Copernic Summarizer, which actually goes beyond the summarizing capabilities within Word. It can summarize any web page or file, and creates a handy list of key terms at the left hand side of the summary, which I can scan, and it highlights terms that interest me throughout the document. Summarizer is great for getting a quick gist of a long PDF, and great for collecting key phrases from a document when I am researching an industry I'm not familiar with.

While I'm on the "less is more" theme, it's fun to see how much can be said in as few words as possible. Wired has a great "Six Words" article that features various celebrities and their pithy comments. Check out some of these gems: "It’s behind you! Hurry before it" - Rockne S. O’Bannon; "Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket." - William Shatner; and my favorite: "Steve ignores editor's word limit and..."- Steven Meretzky

Posted by lisa at 1:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

April 7, 2008

Search Engine Cartoon

I saw this cartoon on MSNBC and just have to share it with our fellow passengers of the wagon.

The cartoon is dead on in my opinion as it relates to company size and obviously hints to the MSN/Yahoo! deal potential.

Posted by sean at 10:15 AM | Comments (26) | TrackBack

April 4, 2008

Social Media News: Sprout Review

Here's a site for those of you looking to create widgets that combine many forms of multi-media content: Sprout. They describe their site as "a quick and easy way for beginner and pro users to create living content including websites, banners, videos, music, photos, RSS feeds, calendars and more."

Here are a few examples of recently created Sprouts:

Sprouts can be promotional, personal, or informational and allow creators to integrate RSS, videos, images, podcasts, etc. into their widgets to make them come alive. Sprouts have also been described as "interactive and portable chunks of web content, widgets, mashups or mini-sites."

Sprouts are a great way to get your interactive content into the hands consumers looking for multimedia to consume. Sprouts have many cool features including:

Pre-built Templates-

Easy Asset Management-

Flexible Components-

Functional Publishing Platform-

Advanced Tracking Options-

I have a feeling this site will make major headway in the coming months as corporations and consumers get word of their highly functional widget offering.

Posted by brett at 10:42 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

April 1, 2008

Google Serves Ads Based on Previous Queries

In 2005 (as reported by Search Engine Journal), Google applied for a patent called "Results based personalization of advertisements in a search engine." Part of the patent abstract reads as follows:

The search results are personalized based on a user profile of the user providing the query. The user profile describes interests of the user, and can be derived from a variety of sources, including prior search queries, prior search results, expressed interests, demographic, geographic, psychographic, and activity information.

Until now, I hadn't seen any instances of Adwords being served based on prior queries in the same session. (This doesn't mean it hasn't happened -- only that I haven't seen it.) But recently I've begun to notice it when signed in to my Google account. Each time I've noticed it (it's been hard to reproduce) it typically occurs after several searches for one particular topic, followed by a sudden shift to a query for another topic. For example, here is one recent search pattern:

[laptops]
[laptop repair]
[laptop parts]
[trucks]

Here is the resulting SERP for the [trucks] query. I've compressed the page so you can see both organic and paid results:

Here is the query set for the second example:

[gloves]
[work gloves]
[gardening gloves]
[jersey gloves]
[heavy duty gloves]
[wheelbarrows]

And here are the organic/paid results for [wheelbarrow]:

The second example is admittedly less convincing, because it's plausible that glove retailers could purchase bids for "wheelbarrow" terms. But I was unable to see any "glove" ads in subsequent searches for "wheelbarrow" terms.

This is interesting because query results like this allow the ad to really stick out contextually and give the advertiser the whole stage, so to speak, for a certain term. And even though the user has changed gears and is searching for something new, the "old" vein of queries is certainly still in his or her mind. I would love any feedback about how widespread these results are, CTR data for "residual" query ads, etc.

Posted by erik at 7:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack