User: OK, I am a SEO specialist and I need to create SEO plan for a new client. The task is
pretty straightforward, but there are so many options! What do I need to do firstly? And what operations don't matter?

Yes, there are too many options and it can be very hard to set primary goals that will get your SEO project to the top of search results. SEO experts are likely already provided you with recommendations that contradict with each other.

• Disregard the SEO stuff. Content is king!
• Content doesn't matter. Page Rank does!
• You need more backlinks. We will create them for you. Sign In here for $1500.00

Sounds familiar?

Things don't need to be so complicated. It's seems to be evident that you are not the first person who faced this issue and, thus, your SEO plan is not required to be a something the world have never seen.

You need to simply review sites already created by your competitors and perform the same operations they did in the past

Step #1: Investigate the Competition

Let's say you have a site that sells hats. The users find your site by entering 'buy hat' in Google. You know that your goal is to be at the first place in the search results each time the users enter 'buy hat' keywords.

What operations do you need to perform to be at the first place? Let's see how your competitors managed to do this:

1. Open Google and enter 'buy hat'.
2. Open the page that appears at the first position in search results.
   
3. Write down the PR of the page you entered.
   
   NOTE: Google Toolbar is required to get information on the PR. If you don't have Google Toolbar installed, follow the URL: toolbar.google.com.
4. Get information on the competitors' backlinks by entering the following query in Google:
   "CompetitorSite.com" -site:CompetitorSite.com and write down the value
   
5. Does the competitor has keywords in Title?
6. Does the competitor has keywords in URL?
   

Step #2: Process The Results

As a result of operations above you should have a list with neat goals. It is clear that in order to be at the first position in the search results you need to

1. Obtain PR 5.
2. Get 47,400 links to your site (gosh!).
3. Create the pages with words 'buy' and 'head' in title and in the URL.

Follow the recommendations above, get your site to the top and be happy!

PS By the way, our new tool Google SEO Recommendations performs the operations listed above automatically. It also provides you with SEO-recommendations.

Gushchin Dmitry is the creator of Easy SEO Tracking service. The service allows users to track the SEO parameters of theirs sites.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

How To Create A Powerful SEO Plan In 10 minutes

I’m a huge fan of ESPN’s Bill Simmons and two of his most memorable columns are when he and Malcolm Gladwell did “extended” email dialogues on relevant topics. I wanted to interview Steve Plunkett but when I realized that he had already been interviewed on both the websites where I had been posting, I thought that perhaps that doing an e-dialogue with him might be an interesting blogging exercise (and I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether it worked or not…)

Steve: The 3 facets of Social Media are: Value, Engagement, Genuine.
Do you provide value?
Are you engaging?
Are you real?

I keep thinking 4… but there is a place in this world for people who swear and talk sexy, not really B2B, but could be wildly successful in B2C or Entertainment.

Todd: There is a place in the world for people who swear & talk sexy = Adult :.)

What astounds me is that people feel they have to be a certain way on social media in order to be successful. Apart from some obvious uber-celebrities, the successful social media folks share a common authenticity no matter how sweet, sour, salty or bitter that authenticity is. Is there anything less cordial and commercial than @shitmydadsays? Yet, look at the value it’s provided to many millions…

Steve: Exactly.. Entertainment value… the whole reason I started “Paisley’s Cool sites” (now Cool Websites Organization http://www.coolwebsites.org), was to showcase the “cool websites” out there, I had a column in the paper, weekly interviews, weekly radio show on 4 clear channel stations, simply about what was cool on the web, from 1996 on… until 9/11 happened then I knew people who I had linked to in that month (windows on the world restaurant, north tower, WTC) and watch the web server I linked to become “unavailable”, as we watched the tower on tv fall to the ground in a cloud of dust. So I kinda stopped “link building”, (which honestly… wasn’t the purpose. I was getting 100k uniques a day for the “coolest flash website”, which at that time, people were pushing the limits for flash websites… like http://2advanced.com and others, of course we also linked to www.doggydoo.com, one of the “dotcoms” that literally sold poop, small, medium and large, hermetically sealed to send to someone you love.. LOL.

As we age “professionally” linking to sites about poop, looks less professional than say blogging about the differences between twitter integration on Bing and Google for your company’s http://blog.mccom.com blog. However part of social media’s interaction with search is not about tweets, it’s about amazon, ringtones, youtube and music. There isn’t really that much search efforts around that spoken about.. or maybe it’s because I don’t blog about seo tactics, just strategy?

Todd: Networks existed well before social media…they weren’t as accessible and visible to the masses but arguably that made them more valuable. Social media isn't the end game for your message…it’s the temporal disseminator of it to where it will get picked up and acknowledged “permanently” via links which pass the value.

As to you other point, frequently your SEO Strategist and your SEO Tactician are 2 different people with two different skill sets. Articulating a SEO vision and managing its implementation is very different than doing the everyday grunt work in a SEO campaign. Visionaries tend not to be the most detail oriented folks…

Steve: That’s what I don’t get… are there actually SEOs who do not touch code… just buy links, spam comments and such without even editing the website? Then again I can see some facets of Local search that don’t’ really require you to edit a website, your thoughts?

Todd: It’s true…there are some aspects of search (certainly local) that can be done without touching code. However, to be any good, you have to have a broad based education and a variety of experiences in order to offer maximum value to anyone. I can’t tell you how many times something I’ve done years ago in a very different context has seeded my mind into coming up with an optimum solution today.

SEO isn’t just about knowledge…it’s about perception. That’s why I’m not big about learning SEO in a classroom setting. A class might teach you knowledge…it could possibly teach you how to think but it won’t teach you how to perceive. Only experience can teach you that and if you don’t have a holistic Internet Marketing background (SEO + PPC + Social Media), you’re far less likely to come up with the $$$ insights.

Steve: I just had this conversation with Robert from @SearchExchange (@NC_SEO on twitter), he was like.. “ohh.. so you’re one of those old people, like we can get you a walker to get to the stage at Search Exchange” – as in I’m a webmaster/code hacker and he understands links a different way I do but his SEO works, just not the same way I do SEO. However, recently I have had the opportunity to train someone, (Yes, I have an SEO Minion/Clone.. Be afraid, Be VERY Afraid!!), who thinks and reasons in a way that mirrors my own, with a slight difference. I taught her FTP and Notepad, the first thing she asked was “Do we really need four blockquotes?”. She picked up the “holistic” aspect of writing clean code. That is something that can’t be taught, even more with Google’s last major announcement was something concerning page load times. Strategy not just tactics are the key to good SEO, from keyword to cash register, what happens?

Todd: I’m now celebrating 10 years in Search Marketing. When I learned SEO, there were no blogs, no RSS feeds, a relatively few websites on the topic, and just a few major forums (most notably Webmaster World). While it was clearly easier to rank well naturally, you had to figure out what to do with almost no outside guidance. The education I got back then is priceless and even though the knowledge I learned is mostly out of date, the process I went through then has greatly contributed to my success now. Even the boring task of recognizing and fixing clean code offers valuable lessons and if you always use a CMS that automates that for you, you missing a major part of the learning process.

Steve: I think the old “usability” + keyword targeted copy and site structure still works every time. Google’s driving directive is to “provide the most uniquely relevant results for each searcher”, as long as you target your customers digital assets with that primary objective in mind you should do fine. Not all CMS systems are horrible for SEO. Recently we have been working on a website for a Microsoft SharePoint CMS consulting firm, SharePoint rocks for SEO as far as CMS’s are concerned.

Todd: You probably know much more about CMS systems than I do. What I do know is that the best CMS for SEO doesn’t add a lot of value if it isn’t being run by an experienced “competitive webmaster”. Excellent SEO’s when presented with a new and unique set of circumstances tend to want to tweak and tinker with what they are given to see if they can supercharge its performance.

One of the reasons I truly value my peers in this industry (such as yourself) is that their ingenuity and insight is absolutely tremendous. Whatever situations I might face, chances are someone in my extended network has successfully navigated through the problem (and chances are they are likely to share). When a group of creative, intuitive, and friendly people pool their common knowledge, anyhurdle can be overcome.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

SEO Dialogue: Steve Plunkett & Todd Mintz

There is a reason why SEO sucks for many, many people. It seems SEO is HATED even, in many cases. I usually ignore that SEO Hater stuff because many, many people don’t really understand what SEO is, and some people like to foster SEO F.U.D. (Fear, Uncertainty,  Doubt… the same stuff that sells backup systems and certain unnecessary insurance policies). Whatever.

SEO Lovers versus SEO Haters

I pondered on how the world splits between SEO lovers and SEO haters.  Google Insights provides some help here if you compare how people are clicking on SEO love and SEO hate.

Perhaps surprisingly SEO love provides the 100 benchmark here and that reflects the current view.  Over the years, SEO love has been gradually picking up its adherents.

• 2006    25
• 2007    31
• 2008    47
• 2009    62
• 2010    75

'SEO hate' was not even on the radar screen with a 0 reading until this year, 2010, where it now has a score of 7.  Clearly something is stirring here.

What was SEO?

Before we pile too much analysis on here, it is important to define what we're talking about.  Danny Sullivan, SEO's defender if ever there was on, has just weighed in with Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up?

I’ve found it annoying that over the years, more and more people use SEM to mean paid search, as if SEM excludes SEO. That’s not how I defined SEM — search engine marketing — back 2001. I’d still like to see the original definition retained. But I might be swimming against the tide. …

SEO has been the term used for gaining natural listings and also for people or companies who do such work. The letters stands for Search Engine Optimization. No, SEO is not about spamming the search engines. It’s an acceptable practice that search engines actively encourage. In the search world, SEO is equal to PR in the “real” world. Good SEO can’t guarantee good search engine “coverage,” any more than good PR can guarantee a favorable newspaper article. But it can increase the odds, if done within acceptable boundaries.

He goes on with some interesting information on what this all may mean.  However it focuses on definitions and perhaps the real discussion should pick up some wider issues.

What is SEO?

That simple question is as difficult to answer as an exactly parallel question, What is Marketing?  There are no clear cut, black and white answers when you try to tackle apparently simple issues like this.  Every individual has by now built up a whole set of associated concepts and emotions.  Here we have prime examples of that old picture of the 7 blind men standing around an elephant and trying to explain to the others what this elephant thing is: it's a wall, it's a tree, it's a tube and so on.

When it comes to marketing, no one has been trying to promote the concept in a major way so whatever it currently is has arrived by an evolutionary process.  Different views have been debated and worked with and in society we now have a very wide mix of how people view marketing.  This society view is even to an extent created by the actions of marketing practitioners.  Hear the word marketing and some will think instantly of trying to force our children to overeat sugar and of unwanted telephone calls just as you're sitting down to supper.

The evolution of how SEO is now interpreted by the individual or entrepreneur in the street is even more complex.  SEO has not just evolved naturally by the interaction of a host of players.  In this case there is a huge gorilla sitting in the corner of the room.  For many people, SEO is synonymous with having a high ranking on the Google search engine report page (SERP) for important keyword queries.  Google sets the rules for that although it is somewhat elusive in giving guidance on how to achieve those high rankings.

How then does Google define SEO.  Here is what they currently offer:

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer." Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site.

Although many people will not have read the Google definition, perhaps that growing score for 'SEO hate' shows that more and more people are feeling as Google does and moving to that end of the scale.  What is causing society to increasingly accept that view of SEO?  Perhaps the biggest factor is the most obvious factor – how SEO gets marketed.

SEO Marketing defines SEO

Marketing is all about communicating with prospects and clients.  If there is a great deal of marketing activity, then it would not be surprising that this has a big influence on society's views and perceptions of a topic.  In this case, there are two major influences In SEO marketing.

The first major influence in creating the demand for SEO is Google itself.  It has been extremely successful in suggesting that keyword searches are the way to find information.  The word is out: your website must be visible in important keyword searches.  Having planted that idea, Google then has built a huge business on this foundation by selling ads that will help you be visible when people do keyword searches.  Unfortunately at the same time, this marketing has created a large measure of FUD.  That stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.  Google understandably cannot give out too much information since then all would know how to be at the top.

Unfortunately the Google algorithms are not perfect and do allow spamming websites created merely to be at the top of keyword queries to succeed, at least for a time.  Google may warn against SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.  They often promise thousands of content web pages and thousands of back-links for surprisingly low costs.  Such methods may work for a time but will result in long term harm.  Google is clear on this:

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for "burn fat at night" diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

Despite all this, the SEO market place is largely defined by these high output/low cost SEO 'experts'.  It will not be surprising to see that 'SEO hate' grows even more.

How to preserve your SEO Sanity

One might be depressed by this worsening situation for SEO.  So many thought SEO was the magical silver bullet that would bring Internet success.  How does one keep whatever good may be represented by SEO and ignore the irrelevant and possibly damaging aspects of SEO.

It really is very simple.  It is important to remember:

SEO is necessary but not sufficient.

SEO is only part of the toolkit that must be kept in the marketing box.  There are many other aspects to developing websites that perform and achieve a company's goals. It should not be a company goal to get a high ranking in a Google keyword search.  It should be a company goal to be in contact with as many potential prospects as possible and convert as many of them as possible into customers who make purchases.

This involves the look and feel of the website, the usability of the website as visitors explore what is there and the ability of the website to create trust and convert visitors to buyers.  All these other dimensions must be optimized in a way that does not jeopardize the search engine friendly aspects of the website.

Perhaps a final confirmation of this view can come from Google itself.  It provides tools for measuring a website's performance with its Google Analytics metrics.  Here is how they describe what they measure:

Improve your site and increase marketing ROI.

Google wants you to attract more of the traffic you are looking for, and help you turn more visitors into customers.  Use Google Analytics to learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with your site. Make informed site design improvements, drive targeted traffic, and increase your conversions and profits.

There's not a mention of SEO there, even though many of the resulting improvement ideas may fall under that topic.  That's the way to love SEO.  It has its place, but it's not the be-all and end-all.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

SEO – Love It or Hate It

The measurement methods described below will allow you to communicate with your client exactly how much your work has improved their site.

This list does not include third-party measurements such as Pagerank, Alexa or Siterank. These external measures are too easy to fake, providing false results. Frankly, having a high Pagerank comes naturally after doing a lot of hard work in other areas — it's not a measurement that in and of itself should be used to determine how successful your site is.

Increasing Conversion Percentage

Every site that you work with needs to establish a primary goal. Perhaps it's making a shopping cart purchase, perhaps it's having a user complete a contact us form. The conversion percentage of that action is a key measurement for you to pay close attention to.

Google Analytics is the easiest tool to use for tracking conversions, although for small projects Website Optimizer is a good utility as well. For complicated multi-step processes like shopping carts, Analytics is the preferred measurement tool over Website Optimizer.

Keyword Ranking

By tracking the rankings of keywords as they rise and fall over time you can measure your link building efforts. If success for your client means that you need to be on the first page of Google for a particular term, it's important to know if the site ever enters or exits that realm of success. Here's a full list of utilities to help you track keyword rankings.

Clickthrough Percentage

Optimization does not have to be limited to on-site efforts. Improving clickthrough percentage from the SERPs is a worthwhile task. By working to improve individual page titles (and even seemingly minor details like meta description), you can indeed work to improve the clickthrough percentage of visitors searching for your target terms.

Tracking Phone Calls

The ability to track conversions or leads from phone calls is not the nebulous task that it used to be. The emergence of Google Voice means that creating a unique phone number for any particular advertising campaign is a simple task. Creating too many numbers can quickly become overwhelming though, so you'll need to segment your campaigns wisely. Head here for more information on tracking phone calls.

I hope that these tracking techniques can help you to quantify your optimization efforts in the future.

Will Reinhardt is the administrator at SEO Keyword Ranking, where he helps SEO professionals track their keyword rankings over time.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

4 Ways to Quantify Optimization

According to the [awesome!] book Web Design For ROI by Closed Loop PPC Marketing's Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus – and most people's analytics data – the purpose of a homepage is to efficiently drive visitors deeper into the site. Efficiency is measured by the click through rate from the home page to inner pages – roughly equal to the percentage of visitors who don't bounce.

In other words, the homepage's purpose is not to sell. Yet that's what landing pages do. So how can you reconcile the two?

If I can borrow a term from the good folks at Ion Interactive, you can turn the homepage into a landing path.

To understand the difference between a landing page and a landing path, imagine your website is a bricks-and-mortar shoe retailer. As you walk in the door, you're greeted by a salesman. After saying hello, he can say one of two things:

1 – "Are you ready to buy a pair of our black suede shoes?"

2 – "What style of shoes are you looking for – formal or casual?"

In the first case, most people who just walked in aren't yet sold on the product and don't necessarily want black suede shoes. They're likely to say no, and leave because of the pushy salesman who only gave them the choice of buying or not. A handful might buy right away.

In the second case, most people are likely to pick either formal or casual shoes, and from there the salesman can inquire further into what type of product they'd like, by asking about colour, sizes etc. They're a lot likelier to buy, even if it takes a few minutes more.

Now what's more precious – traffic in your store or a few minutes of your salesman's (server's) time?

Obviously, the answer is the traffic. You're paying the salesman / server to be there anyways, so why try and force the sale immediately?

That's where landing paths come in. Instead of trying to close the deal right off the get go, they offer visitors a few, limited choices. In effect, they act like the salesman conducting the needs inquiry in an offline setting.

Here are a couple of examples from around the web:

Dreamhost

Dreamhost's new site offers visitors three choices: a free trial, a low-cost option for the mom-n-pop masses, and a private server for more serious webmasters.

While a more space between options would clarify the differences between offers, Dreamhost does a good job speaking to three different audiences and driving people further into their site. Additionally, they effectively move them down the conversion funnel.

(Getting click throughs doesn't equate to conversions – you could move people further in with, say, a blog, but you wouldn't get as far that way in terms of conversions.)

SportEvents

Sport Events segments most of its visitors using the same rotating flash slideshow, rather than relying on numerous static page elements like Dreamhost. This again helps visitors find exactly what they want and increase click throughs – imagine a horse racing fan hitting their homepage and only seeing basketball as available.

In addition, the lower third of the page uses a secondary refinement / filtering area where visitors can self-segment according to the type of buyer they are – corporate, group or individual. (There's also some odd insider speak about "The Ticket Advantage" which doesn't explain anything.)

Overlap with SEO:

Homepages tend to target generic, competitive terms.

As a result, the traffic they draw is at the head, with a vague intent. So those visitors are best served by a salesman asking whether they want formal or casual shoes, or perhaps asking about colour choices or shoe-brand preference.

You thus segment the traffic and draw it in – kind of like when Google offers search refinements at the end of some search results page.

Further reading:

I wrote a detailed piece on ecommerce filters and refinement options for Search Engine Land. That should help people with tying their SEO, usability and conversion optimization together.

The Ion Interactive blog looooooves talking about landing paths. I learned a lot from that and from their great book, Honest Seduction (though it's tediously repetitive at times).

Wider Funnel's also got a great conversion blog, from which I particularly recommend their LIFT model which easily explains graphically what would surely take 1000+ words to explain.

Finally, my piece on developing personas using 4Q (personas are the personifications of your traffic segments; they help you design your site to serve your whole audience better) was nominated for a SEMMY and is used as a reference in Full Sail University's internet marketing master's degree course on usability.

Gab Goldenberg wrote this piece for Red Fly Marketing, a search engine optimisation company based in Dublin, Ireland, also offering search-friendly web design and other internet marketing services.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Can You Use Landing Pages As Homepages?

If you show your readers a direct path that will help them to solve a problem they're having, they will support your site and your efforts to bring them more solutions.

What are Your Strengths?

The process of becoming an authority site for many keywords is a relatively simple — if time-consuming — matter of assisting readers answer their questions with answers you already know. What skills do you already have that you can teach to others?

The point of starting with a list of your strengths is not to determine the answers to the questions your readers are asking, the point is to determine what the questions are. In the process of learning that skill you will have already tackled hurdles that your readers haven't even considered yet.

Explanation not Exploitation

So how do we turn this process of explanation into a profitable venture? The key is to find a connection between a product or service that you can offer as a legitimate solution to their problem. This can either be a solution that you design yourself or can be a specific software application that you can explain how to use.

the solution
is
your explanation
of the processFor example, if you know how to animate short cartoons, you can create a site that details how to use the software that creates those cartoons. If you place an affiliate link to the software at the top of your site, your visitors will happily make that purchase because you've given them the solution to their problem of "how to make cartoons". The solution isn't the software, the solution is your explanation of the process of creating the cartoons that happens to involve the software.

Continuing the Concept

If your strengths can not be related to an affiliated product, you could create an eBook explaining your solution and offer that for sale. This concept could be extended to include a full membership site.

By solving the problems your readers are having you will quickly become known as an authority for your topic.

Will Reinhardt is the administrator at SEO Keyword Ranking, where he helps SEO professionals track their keyword rankings over time.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Problem Solving Your Way Towards Profitability

One of the things we track is how the content we share with you is doing. It's a list we check not twice but trice using the Wordpress plugin Popularity Contest, Google Analytics, and FeedBurner.

Most Popular

• Google Announces Click-to-Call Ads on Mobile Devices with AdWords
  Where we introduce you to Tyler Calder, one of our PPC experts, and he introduces us to Google Adword's newly introduced Click-To-Call. Thought Google already tried that before? This implementation is geared towards mobile.
• Three Lessons Bob Villa Taught Me About Link Building
  Melanie Nathan, link builder extra-ordinaire, on how link building isn't just spreadsheets and backlink analysis but also doing your due diligence in researching your link target.
• What You Need to Know about Android: The Balkanization of Mobile
  Not only are there almost as many browsers as there are mobile phones, it seems as if there as many different operating systems for them too. Helen Overland touts the reasons she just loves her Android phone but also tells us what Android means for the mobile market.
• 7 Seals Of An Effective Partnership Marketing Deal
  Ron Kunitzky continues his instructional series on what partnership marketing is and how to pursue and setup such a deal yourself.
• Three Easy Mistakes to Avoid When Doing Keyword Research
  Will Reinhardt made the transition this month from writing at our sister site SEO Scoop to contributing right here. The 3 mistakes he points out are indeed easy ones to make.
• 11 Tools For Domain Name Research and Registration
  Another post by Will that went out of the park. A screenshot-driven post describing domain tools any domainer will find valuable.
• People don't remember what was said — People remember how they felt
  Scott Gould is a remarkable person doing a remarkable job: he builds experiences. First time I saw him tweet about that I thought "douchebag alert!", followed his posted link for a good laugh … and ended up devouring his blog. When we finally corned him he graciously accepted to do a guest post he delivered big time. Drawing a comparison with restaurants, Scott lucidly outlines what exerience-based thinking is and how you can apply it.
• What SEO's Need to Know About Page Speed
  Tag-teaming with coywriter Megan Slick, Stephanie Woods holds up the Wednesday's on SEO Scoop. As technical maintenance on that site interfered with her posting schedule we offered to host it here on SEP instead and girl are we glad we did. Steph Stephanie not only explains what the speed issues are but shares the essential tools for analyzing and resolving them.
• New York Times: Paid Content & Visibility [Subscription Content SEO]
  An SEO brain game: given that a site is (largely) going behind a paywall, what strategies can you come up with to keep the site in the (link) picture?

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

January 2010: The Most Popular Posts

Is your site slow? Do you even know? If you’re not a 100% sure, now is a good time to check.

Why Is Page Speed Important?

From a usability point-of-view: If your pages take a long time to load, there is a good chance your site visitor will hit the back button on their browser, and click on the next relevant search result. People have a diminishing amount of patience for pages that take a long time to load these days.

From a search engine spider’s point-of-view: There is a whole lotta code for spiders to read on a web page. Reducing unnecessary chunks of code makes search engine spiders’ jobs much easier. For the sake of efficiency, it makes sense for Google to have this factor carry more weight.

Now that's a fast spider: The Ferrari Scuderia Spider 16M

Speed Check … 1… 2 …

Now back to the burning question, is your site fast enough?

To help you answer that question check out the following tools. They are all free, so you pretty much have to try at least one of them.

Google Page Speed Tool

The Google Page Speed Tool is one of the reasons there is talk lately about Google factoring page speed more seriously into the algorithm. The Google Page Speed Tool was announced on Google’s Code Blog in June 2009.

The Google Page Speed Tool is an open-source Firefox extension that gives you feedback on what is slowing down your page speed time. For the most part it’s pretty techy, so if you don’t speak fluent tech then hand the list of results to the web dev team you work with. Together you will find ways to implement the results. It’s actually a pretty sweet tool, so I recommend you give it a try.

Google Site Performance

This addition to Google Webmaster Tools is the other reason you’re seeing talk about page speed recently. Like the Google Page Speed Tool, the Google Site Performance Tool provides suggestions on how to make your site faster. According to Google, they are working “Towards the goal of making very webpage load as fast as flipping the pages of a magazine”. It also tells you how your site compares to other sites on the Internet.

When you are logged into Google Webmaster Tools, you will find the Site Performance Tool under the "Labs" tab.

YSlow

Yahoo’s Firefox plugin, YSlow, was introduced before Google’s Page Speed tool. With the future of Yahoo! being uncertain, you might not want to get too attached. In the meantime, it’s worth your time checking it out. YSlow filters results in logical chunks of information, so it is easy to read and understand.

Web Page Analyzer

This tool is really kickin' it back old school. It’s the first (and only) page speed tool I’ve used until Google and Yahoo! recently introduced their tools. The site doesn’t look like much, but it contains a lot of useful information.

What Else Can You Do?

From a web developer’s point-of-view there are a lot of things that can be done. As an SEO who specializes in marketing (and not writing code) it is up to you to provide your web development team with knowledge and information on how to implement these changes.

Go team!

It's not all completely technical though. There are things that can be done without having to have an extensive knowledge of code.

Be wary of using embedded media. Limit your use of any types of video, animation, audio or other media displayed within a web page. Say goodbye to that crazy Flash intro that nobody wants to watch anyways.

Install Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking Code. The Google Analytics Blog announced the release of the beta version of the Asynchronous Tracking Code on December 1, 2009. The code is still in Beta, but claims to reduce webpage load time. You can simply replace your old code with the new code and keep the same Analytics account that you currently have. Make sure you read where to place the code because it goes in a different spot (top of the head section) than it currently resides (the footer).

SMBs consider changing your DNS to a Google Public DNS. Announced by Google on December 3, 2009, Google Public DNS was released as part of Google’s efforts to increase the speed of the internet. This might be a good option for sites that don’t have their own internal company server. This is still a new tactic and people are on both sides of the fencein response to this so far.

Find reliable hosting. This means spending more money for (and finding) a quality hosting provider. This is a sore spot for some people as it potentially means that large companies who can afford to pay for expensive hosting have an unfair advantage.

Lots of technical stuff with your code. I considered listing all of the steps for the technologically advanced, but realized I don’t know even enough to even fake it. Instead here’s an excellent list of articles from people who know what they are talking about:

Google Code Blog: Web Performance (Speed) Best Practices
Page Speed Coming to a Ranking Algorithm Near You
SEO for Google Caffeine
Use Google Page Speed Tool to Speed Up Your Site
Tools to Speed Up Your Site

No matter what, having your site run smoothly, efficiently and quickly is in your best interest if you use your website to increase revenue.

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Stephanie Woods is an internet marketer living in Kelowna, BC. You can find her at her internet marketing blog or on Twitter. When she’s not helping clients achieve their online goals, you’ll find her riding her beloved snowboard any time she can.

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The iPad introduces a new family of handheld devices.

More versatile than dedicated ereaders, more comfortable for e-content consumption than smart phones or PDA's and definitely less bulky and clumsy than a laptop or netbook.

It's also less personal than those devices; Apple sees this as something that lays around the house, used by family members.

But it's the content that can be sold and displayed that you should focus on.

iPad Content

The iPad will be able to work with third party applications.

Existing iPhone and iPod Touch apps in the Apple App Store are compatible the same way apps for the iPhone carry over to the iPod Touch.

Big difference: the much larger screen.

Relying on your existing apps is probably not a good idea: you'll be the odd one out, looking all funky with your small screen app displayed large sized.

Much of the digital content that will be consumed on the iPad will be licensed (read: paid for) e-content.

Think of books, movies, TV, but also newspapers, magazines and comics.

Those latter three have never had a display platform the likes of the iPad; the probability of rekindled consumer love for these formats is a potential marketing asset for SEO clients.

Like the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad is able to display web pages.

iPad Reach & Branding Opportunity

While at a later stage you can do amazing branding using dedicated iPad apps and content, your "first out of gate" channels are the web, feeds and email.

These 3 bypass any Apple approval delays.

With each you should check as soon as possible how it looks, feels and operates on the iPad. Landscape email view as shown above changes what you can expect people see – and how they interact with it.

iPad Web Design

The mantra of good web design, and by extension solid SEO recommendations, is: web sites are browser/device-independent.

That is: if you've done your homework, your website will work in anything ever invented to display HTML for consumption.

There is one exception to the rule: if you want to burn money. In that case you make multiple versions of your web site to target the hundreds of web browsers and web browsing devices.

So what does it take to make your web site iPad-ready and SEO friendly?

1. HTML-only fundament

Make a basic (X)HTML page that any browser from any era can display. <head>, <title>, <body>, <h1>, <p> structures. Don't bold, italicize or underline. <a href> for links. Don't think about, consider or use images at this stage yet.

With this in place you have a web site that will work anywhere, anytime. Anywhere … Anytime. That includes a text-only browser from the early 1990's but also a beloved search engine like Google.

From here on you can only make things better.

2. Mark up your (X)HTML with CSS

Go through your structure and sections and add CSS classes and especially CSS ID's.

The CSS will help you to style your content and structure; give it color and dimensions.

Not only that – CSS ID's and structures are a great way to target very specific parts of your web page, something that will come in handy in the next step.

3. Add Unobtrusive JavaScript

This is where you'll add everything else; from JavaScript to Flash.

The key approach here is: "cool to add" vs. "need to have to display/use the page".

Tell your web designer to test for everything, to never expect and certainly never rely on.

Your web designer will thus write code that will first check if the browser can do what we want it to.

Two practical examples: menu's & Flash.

Menu: Because you've made the whole page in basic XHTML, your menu will always work – and if the browser can handle JavaScript, your script can turn that basic HTML menu into an animated mouse-over dropdown one.

Flash: because your page's JavaScript is responsible for inserting that Flash video (vs. just dropping it there anyway…) and your JavaScript in turn checks if Flash is something this browser can handle, nothing goes wrong when an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch user comes along.

iPad Web Design Tricks

The iPad will have you look at your web site together with your SEO, conversion and usability specialists as its portrait mode shows almost all of a web page – at once.

Its landscape mode has a more traditional "above the fold" view:

The luscious, tactile display invites product photos, close-ups; put the product almost literally in the hands of the end user.

iPad SEO

Now that you have a cross-browser compliant web page, you have a page that can be shown anywhere, anytime.

Make it known to the world that your site can be displayed on their device.

People will be looking for anything that can help them enjoy their new iPad: be first out of gate.

Search Engine People provides time resistant recommendations for mobile web site experiences. Our forward looking recommendations have repeatedly been confirmed by later developments and enable our clients to access markets simply out of reach of their competition. Take a moment today to talk with a friendly expert.

Images courtesy of GDGT – The Social Gadget Site

Additional resources:

• Apple iPad
• The seven rules of Unobtrusive JavaScript
• Faster DOM Access
• Mobile & Local Search
• Don't Leave Home Without It: 8 Steps for Making Your Site Mobile Friendly

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

iPad Web Design & SEO: First Looks

1. Aim for a Specific Objective

When you set out to create a lead nurturing campaign, you have to know what you are really trying to accomplish. Explore the benefits that you hope to gain from your lead nurturing program, and go much deeper than “I want to attract more business.”

Consider whether you want your local business lead nurturing program to attract repeat customers for your SEO services, close new clients that have never bought SEO services before, or attract local businesses that currently get their SEO services form another provider.

Knowing what your specific objectives are will help you stay on task when you develop your lead nurturing program. Defining these objectives will also help you determine whether your program is meeting those goals.

2. Keep in Contact with an Interesting Newsletter

Creating a newsletter gives your leads the opportunity to keep up with what you are doing and to educate them. This includes any tips that you might have for them and any specials that your business can offer.

Note: The goals to educate and present info on your own business are intermediate to the final goals of closing more business. Once you’ve set your strategic goals (e.g. take business from other SEO providers) you’ll want to break things down with more specific objectives regarding education and soft-selling.

3. Start with Small Nurturing Programs And Develop Them Over Time

One of the biggest mistakes that SEO businesses make is implementing an aggressive lead nurturing program that tries to do too much too quickly. You don’t want to overwhelm leads – that’s a one way ticket to the ‘junk’ folder when your name appears in the “From:” line.

4. Offer Information Instead of Hard Sales

Try to keep your content informative and think about the types of information that your potential clients will want to read. This shows that you are an expert in your field and also makes clients feel more receptive to new ideas.

Selling constantly feels pushy and does the opposite of nurturing leads – it alienates them. It’s like pushing your services on Twitter – keep most tweets non-sales oriented. Marty Weintraub told me at SMX West that he limits self promotional tweets to 1 out of every 25 tweets. Other pros have told me 1 in 10… The idea is just to keep it on the backburner.

5. Target Your Local Business Leads

Make your local business leads feel that they are important to you; they will reciprocate and you will become more important to them. Customize the information that you send each local business lead to show them that your SEO company cares.

Depending on the types of local businesses that you are trying to attract, you might segment your leads into categories by industry, location, and other attributes.

If some of the potential customers serve a specific client base, then customize your efforts to attract their business by showing them that you also understand their target demographics.

Gab Goldenberg collaborated on and edited this post with DoneSEO, which provides SEO services

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