Canadian Advertisers, Pull Thy Collective Head Out of Thy Collective Butt? That could have been the subtitle of some recent speeches and writings by Gord Hotchkiss, a well-known Canadian search marketing guru.

This week, in person and in writing, Gord was tearing into the Canadian business community for its poor record on adopting online advertising and especially search visibility tactics. This is juxtaposed with the Canadian people’s world-leading Internet usage. This theme’s been rolling now for a couple of years, statistically speaking, thanks to reports from companies like comScore, and now buttressed by survey research being disseminated by companies like Yahoo. In terms of quiet rants, it’s been out there since 2001 or so, since some of us began seeing the post-bubble surge of quiet interest in search as the most cost-effective direct marketing and public relations tool going… by our US-based clients, who moved quickly on the opportunity and kept us all busy with work. (It didn’t hurt that our dollar was very low, so we were low-cost providers who otherwise looked, quacked, and smelled like American consultants.)

Full story at WebProNews >>>

If you want to buy golf equipment for your golf vacations, you would fare better if you order everything from your golf shoes to bags, from reliable golf sites. This holds true for baseball as well as tennis.

The factors in Google’s algorithm to rank sites in the Search Engine Results (SERPS) is endlessly discussed and analyzed. One of the factors that appears to have become more prominent recently is Click Tracking.

Here is a layman’s quickie overview of how Google uses some of this data to rank sites and what small business owners can do.

In the most basic form, browsers do a keyword search on a search engine and a list of results. Browses click on one of the results, and a timer starts. If the browser comes back to the search results very quickly, it can be inferred that the browser didn’t find what they wanted and that information (site, keyword and a de-merit point) is factored into the ranking algorithms along with all the other factors.

The opposite is also true, where a browser clicks on a search result and then (apparently) finds what they want, which is inferred from the fact that they don’t return immediately to the SERPs page.

This is somewhat of a faulty assumption as all kinds of things could happen to explain why a browser didn’t return to the SERPs, but it does say something.

This is quite an over-simplified and general explanation but it does give a basic understanding of how this works.

What it means for website owners is clear:

1) You aren’t going to rank for keywords that aren’t relevant to your content. Now more than ever.
2) Make sure your site is what browsers are expecting to find. If you site doesn’t look like an adventure tourism site or an art gallery site, browsers will hit the back button.
2) The Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer. The sites that best serve the results that browsers are looking for will rise higher and the sites that don’t will sink to the bottom (other things being equal).

This gives a very clear message to website owners that is the same as ever — specialize in your niche and give visitors relevant content.

Beyond a simple timer, Google is very likely using much more intensive data in the same way. Google loves data and are one fo the few companies that really knows how to use it. Google’s free Analytics service collects massive amounts of data on keywords browsers use and how visitors interact with websites and many speculate this data is also being used.

Clearly though, Google is obsessed with visitor experience and so should every web site owner. Sign up for Google Analytics and watch how your visitors are interacting with your site and where they are clicking.

Not only will you increase your conversion rate, but help your search rankings as well.

From an antivirus software to other categories like 3d software, you can download software of all sizes if your cheap web hosting stands true to its word. Then cingular wireless has also contributed majorly to this. Now you don’t have to get the unreliable mobile phone software only because your hosting does not allow that size.

If you aren’t using Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) on your blog, it’s time to get on it! Everyday Akismet blocks about 100 spam postings by linkers.

Why so many?

Spammers are trying to get links to their website by posting comments on Blogs to increase their link popularity. Whether the search engines actually pay attention and count the links from blogs is highly questionable. Almost certainly Google excludes these links, but MSN may count them and Yahoo probably counts a few of them.

Why do they keep doing it if they all get blocked?
Obviously nobody is checking or they would see right away their comments aren’t being posted. If they aren’t checking that probably means they aren’t doing it themselves and they can’t be paying whoever they have making the posts very much.

Looks like freelancers in China, Russia or India.

After my short post yesterdday, I say this posting, with
8 steps to ranking well on local search

Local search has got to be one of the best bargains out there! Here are some local search results I noticed this morning.

Submitting to Google local search is free and ranking is easy.

A recent study by comScore found:

63 percent of U.S. Internet users (or approximately 109 million people) performed a local search online in July, a 43-percent increase versus July of 2005.

Not only is local search increasing fast, the people that perform local searches are highly attractive to web merchants:

During the second quarter of 2006, 47 percent of local searchers visited a local merchant as a result of their search behavior, while 41 percent made contact offline. More than one-third (37 percent) made contact online as a result of conducting a local area search.

During the second quarter of 2006, 47 percent of local searchers visited a local merchant as a result of their search behavior, while 41 percent made contact offline. More than one-third (37 percent) made contact online as a result of conducting a local area search.

Why local search?
Local Search has been growing for a while and the reasons behind it make sense. If I am looking for a local merchant, or service, a website gives me a much richer experience than a yellow pages ad.

In addition, the only option a yellow pages ad gives me is to call, which I may not be prepared to do because I want to browse and check out other merchants first.

Combined with a marketing campaign targeting location keywords, you can get twice the real estate on the front page!

Content sites are a great way to soft sell your way to high conversion. I keep producing content for my own sites and client sites and watching the traffice increase slowly but steadily.

Something I have been noticing recently is sites jump in and out of the rankings for no apparent reason. Reading one of my favorities blogs recently BlueHatSEO, I found an article which goes into all the gory details of how Google handles fresh content.
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Today’s post is several items that don’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to
small business owners:

Organic and PPC

Media Post’s Search Insider recently did a great article on the advantages and dis-advantages of Organic Search vs. Pay Per Click

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=54507

Thanks to cingular wireless, we can enjoy all internet services while sitting in our porch and placing our wireless router with the phone. This has been largely made possible by the efficient service of midphase. There are antivirus firewall software arrangements too because of the chat software in our systems, increasing risk of viral threats. Reliable names should be purchased like microsoft office software and only the genuine copy.

I had several conversations with webmasters and clients recently about how much traffic is required for a website to be profitable.

Several webmasters, who have around 200 unique visitors per day, complained that they were making nothing from their sites. The commonly held view of traffic and profitability is that you need thousands or tens of thousands of visitors to make money online.

Here is a short list of some of the factors that go into making a website profitable.
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Ok so you have a website now and an SEO guy has just told you it will cost $2000 - $5000 to get your site on the first page of Google. And it doesn’t stop there! Even after you have paid that much, it will take a year or more.

Those are unfortunately the facts of life. Probably you can get some traffic from MSN and Yahoo in 4 - 6 months, but generally the traffic from Yahoo and MSN doesn’t convert as well.

So, what can small business owners do in the meantime, without a big budget, that will increase their visibility?
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Clients and browsers frequently ask me for information on promoting their website, what they can do, and how the search engines work. So here is a quick primer on what the search engines do, what they want for small business owners with a brand new website.
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