Step Wice SEO

In thiws article we’ve chosen four open-ended hot topics for you to explore. We selected these topics because they’re either a little too close to the cutting edge of today’s SEO or require a little too much individualization from you for us to give you specific instructions.

So you’re going to do the research yourself, with guidance from us! The goal is for you to come away with an approach to use whenever you need to learn something new about search.

If you’re a naturally curious person, and if you find it easy to surf from site to site while staying focused on your goal, it should be a snap.

If you aren’t yet confident in your advanced searching skills, or if you generally don’t trust an answer unless you get it in writing from a paid expert, it will help you stretch your abilities and save your money in the long run!

In this article you’ll start to get a feel for how to pursue your own SEO tactics and plans:

SEO News and Trends
SEO moves fast! It might seem that every time you go out for a cup of coffee, you come back to a whole new set of important players, rumors, and must-haves that weren’t there before.

You’re busy, so nobody expects you to keep up with every little twist and turn along the SEO highway.

In fact, staying a month or so behind the times can prevent you from crowding your brain with unnecessary SEO rumors and speculation.

We recommend keeping up at least a passing knowledge of SEO current events and stashing some solid SEO researching skills in your tool belt. When it comes time to do SEO on your own, you’ll need them! Here’s where to look:

• SEO News Sources
• SEO Forums
• Blogs and e-mail Newsletters

SEO News Sources
The Web is the only way to keep up with the latest SEO news and trends. Unfortunately, not every site is reputable, so you’ll need to wear your heavy-duty BS filters. You can’t go wrong if you stick with articles on the following sites:

Search Engine Watch, www.searchenginewatch.com Danny Sullivan, editor and world-renowned guru of search, offers reviews, updates, tips, and advice with mind-boggling attention to detail, helpful context, and insider information that nobody else comes close to.

HighRankings.com, www.highrankings.com Jill Whalen offers cheerful, no-nonsense, often low-tech advice that’s perfect for do-it-yourself SEOs of all stripes.

ClickZ News, www.clickz.com A little heavier on the marketingspeak, this site offers an impressive gamut of expert advice on all avenues of Internet marketing, not just SEO.

SEOmoz, www.seomoz.org Rand Fishkin’s articles and tips speak to beginners and experts alike. An assortment of page analysis tools are available too.

Information Overload
A recent thread on a search forum asked SEO professionals how they spend an average day on the job.

Looking at the responses, you would think that SEOs are paid based on the number of search engine blogs they read, how many SEO podcasts are filling their libraries, and how many thousands of forum postings they’ve racked up.

Reading SEO info online can make even a seasoned Internet researcher hyperventilate. There are so many acronyms, rumors, and arguments and so much conflicting advice that even if you understand what’s being said, you probably shouldn’t believe it at first blush.

Follow these words of warning as you get your bearings in the overstimulating world of SEO news and advice:

• Always check an article’s date before you read the article. Some sites are better than others at letting you know whether you’re reading something brand-new or a two-year-old history lesson from their archives.

• Beware articles posted on the websites of SEO firms. Many companies publish web articles and tips written by their in-house staff in an effort to improve their linkable noncommercial content and prove their worthiness in the SEO arena.

These authors may be knowledgeable, or they may not be… it’s very difficult to tell if you’re new to the game.

And these kinds of articles are often undated. Some of these authors may have moved on from the SEO company years ago!

If you’re inclined to follow the advice from an SEO firm, do a search for the author’s name to help you determine if they are reputable in the SEO community.

• Lurk! There’s no harm in checking out the SEO forum(s) of your choice, but don’t post-or believe what you read-until you’ve gotten a feel for the competence of the regular posters and the moderators.

Here are some indicators that the advice you’re reading is reliable: Multiple people on multiple sites seem to be giving the same advice;

you can corroborate this advice via an article written by a recognized SEO expert; or you can find your own evidence (using the “I wonder why that’s happening” method) to back it up.

• Pace yourself. Unless you’ve got a life-or-death situation, take in a little information at a time.

SEO resources on the Web are great for researching specific questions on a need-to-know basis.

Just do your best to tune out arcane details like which Google search tab moved where or how many pages Yahoo! says it has in its index today.

In a short time, you’ll have enough SEO expertise that you’ll be able to choose a few sources that you trust and stick with them.

SEO Forums
Forums probably aren’t the best place for beginners. They should do a lot of reading from more focused sites before diving in. As for advice, be wary of everything and always remember that nothing should be taken as fact.

To begin your own SEO forum research, start with these tried-and-true sites:

• forums.searchenginewatch.com
• www.highrankings.com/forum/
• www.webmasterworld.com
• www.searchengineforums.com

Jump in on the forums whenever you have a burning question that needs answering, but don’t count on them for your regular SEO news fix.

Blogs and E-mail Newsletters
One of our favorite ways to keep up-to-date on SEO news is through blogs and e-mail newsletters.

Here, seasoned and uncommonly generous SEO professionals distill the latest happenings into easy-to-read content.

If you trust the source, you can trust the advice. Here are our favorite SEO blogs and newsletters:

• http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/
• Aaron Wall’s blog and newsletter at www.seobook.com
• www.mattcutts.com/blog (for Google-centric information)
• www.problogger.net (for those with blogs)
• www.jimboykin.com

As you continue surfing SEO sites, you’ll probably see other premium content or regular e-mail updates; consider signing up for a subscription from sites you like.

Then do what we do: let them pile up in your inbox, and set aside a time once a week (you can even get away with once a month) to pour yourself a cup of coffee and browse the SEO news.

Explore Local/International Search
Would your site benefit from a geographically targeted campaign? Whether it’s Paris, France, or Paris, Texas, today you’ll choose the area that interests you and determine whether you want to move forward in either of these:

• International search
• Local search

We’ll give you an overview and point you in the right direction for further research.

International Search
The Internet knows no borders, but unfortunately, your SEO campaign does. If your target audience includes an overseas component, you need to learn strategies for international SEO and put a focused effort into your international visibility.

Ask yourself, Which country are you targeting? Is your international audience composed of English speakers?

Which languages do you want to target? Answer these questions for your organization, and then start your research on international SEO with these general guidelines in mind:

International PPC Google AdWords and YSM make it easy to add new campaigns and set them up for different countries and languages.

If your international ads are in English, it’s very simple to edit the targeting preferences on your current campaign to include additional countries.

You should custom-write your ads for non-U.S.-based site visitors, even if they are English speaking, to address their different terminology or needs. Separate sites or landing pages will also improve localization.

To target additional languages, you’ll need to create new PPC campaigns with their own language and country settings.

Google AdWords also allows you to target specific regions or cities within many countries.

So, for example, if you want to sell to Ontario in English but to Quebec in French, you can specify which provinces will see which campaign’s ads.

If you are marketing to a European audience, you’ll also want to look into a PPC campaign with Miva, at www.miva.com, formerly espotting. This company has a large PPC presence in Europe.

International Organic Optimization Let’s say you want your chic boutique website to rank well for searchers in France searching for the French words “parapluie Jaime.”

One approach would be to choose this term as one of your top target keywords and optimize your landing page accordingly.

Good start, but there’s more you can do to optimize for the geographic audience you desire. Here are a few tips to help you sell more of those yellow umbrellas:

DO make sure your landing page is written in the language of the country you want to target.

And your page titles and meta description tags should be in the target language too. Even though there’s an HTML meta tag that allows you to specify which language your web page is written in, the search engine robots will probably ignore it and look at the web page text to make their own determination of language.

Don’t confuse the search engines by sticking substantial portions of several different languages on the same page.

DON’T use your home page for the sole purpose of selecting a language. If you are creating several subsites or site sections in different languages, don’t waste precious home page real estate on choosing a language.

Instead, include quality content in your most important language, with links to other language choices.

DO use a country-specific domain. Your site will get a lift if it has the appropriate country domain:

This is a big clue to the search engines that the site should be shown to a searcher in your target country.

And major search engines often allow their users to request only documents from their own country, so having the right domain will put you in the running.

DO consider building separate sites. Some sites redirect their international domains to their com domain.

Of course, it would be better-for your site and for your user-to create separate sites in separate languages, especially since key content like pricing and contact information may be different for each country.

DO seek inbound links from sites that are in your targeted countries. And be sure to request links in the appropriate language.

DO explore locally popular search sites. Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask have a major presence worldwide, and if your site is in their indices, it will also show up on the international versions of their search sites.

So you could focus on those four search engines and let it go at that. But there may be smaller search sites that play an important role in your country of interest.

For instance, Voila.fr is a major search engine in France. Your soggy Parisian seeking a “parapluie jaune” is just as likely to go there as fr.Yahoo.com, and perhaps more so.

It’s a little heavy on the exclamation points, but www.searchenginecolossus.com has a long country-by-country list of international search engines.

It may even involve a major web development effort, creating unique sites for each of your targeted countries.

Local Search
Been waiting in line for coffee too long? Pull out your wireless PDA and search for another cafe in the vicinity.

Sitting at home on a Saturday night? Order pizza and a video directly through the Web (and while you’re there, join a social networking site!).

What’s good for the searcher is even better for the search-savvy local business owner. If your organization has a brick-and-mortar component and you’d like to use the search engines to gain walk-in customers, begin tackling local search today.

Local search, such as local.google.com and local.yahoo.com, to name two, is changing fast as additional searchers and businesses flock to it.

So keep a sharp eye out for new products and procedures. As a general rule, you will want to approach local search optimization from two angles:

• Finding out which sites are feeding into the local search engine of your choice and submitting to them
• Creating your own local listing

Here’s how to get started:

Who’s feeding whom? Local search listings are usually compiled from a variety of sources, some of which you have control over and some of which you don’t.

Some local searches are fed by partner sites that focus on local listings, such as www.citysearch.com and www.insiderpages.com.

There are a couple of ways you can check to see which sites are feeding into a search engine’s local listings.

First, you can check out the local search engine’s frequently asked questions (FAQs) or review the Webmaster or Business Owner information that many of these services publish on their sites.

You can also search for your competitors and see which sites are listed: Your competitor’s actual site? A review from a content partner?

Once you know which sources are included in the local search engine of your choice, you can go to them directly and attempt to get or improve a listing.

Make your own listing Yahoo! and Google provided easy-to-find links for business owners to submit their own company data to local search.

It’s free or cheap (“enhanced” fee-based options are available)…and worth it at almost any price, in our opinion.

If local search is important to you, you should make it a priority to create your own listing because if the information doesn’t come from you, it will probably come from someone else who doesn’t have a personal stake in the listing’s accuracy or success.

They may not make it easy-yet-but it is possible for you to exert a little control over your local listing.

Explore PPC localization. It’s easy to test-drive a local PPC campaign. Just follow your PPC engine’s instructions for selecting your targeted geographical areas, and assign a budget for testing.

For many sectors, the national players will be the dominant players in the local search marketplace.

They have brand names and this gives them an advantage in the hybrid PPC auctions. Dominos and Pizza Hut can coordinate locally targeted campaigns and have significant resources.

The local pizza place many also advertise, but there is only room for half a dozen pizzerias in the search result. So, the number of local players involved in an area doesn’t increase revenue to an engine.

Kinkos, Sir Speedy, and AlphaGraphics can also coordinate aggressive localized campaigns, making it difficult for the local business owner to break into the results profitably.

For professional services, there are not many national companies, so local players will be active. However, once again, there -will only be two or three Atlanta divorce attorneys who pay enough to be at the top and get most of the clicks.

Shopping and Media Search
These highly specialized segments of search are being built out as the major engines follow the trends of available media and website owner practices and preferences.

The specialty search can be found predominantly as components of the major search engines. They include the following:

Shopping search Sites such as Froogle, Yahoo! Shopping, MSN Shopping, not to mention large shopping engines such as Shopzilla and Shopping.com, allow merchandisers to submit frequent updates of product details and prices.

Image search Sites such as http://images.google.com and
http://search.yahoo.com/images allow you to search strictly for images.

If one of your site’s differentiating factors is its images, don’t overlook image search as a way to snag some targeted visitors.

Depending on the search engine, optimizing for image search may involve writing optimized image ALT tags and adding keyword-rich text immediately surrounding your images.

Video search Upload your video, set up your feed, or wait to be crawled! Any way you slice it, video search is taking shape at sites like http://video.google.com and http://video.yahoo.com, not to mention media search sites like singingfish.com.

Since video in general is difficult for search engines to crawl, some video search engines are currently giving site owners an uncharacteristically high level of control over submitting, including metadata that you can include in video-specific RSS tags.

Like local search, these specialty search areas are still being developed and refined. So rather than give you likely-to-be-obsolete steps for getting yourself optimized and listed, we’re going to give you our methodology for finding out how. Here are the steps:

Search as if your site depends on it. First, go to the specialty search engine and start searching.

You want to get the full picture of what the listings look like. Try searching for your own organization, your competitors, product names, and commercial and noncommercial sites.

Get a feel for listings that seem compelling and listings that look skippable, and try to put your finger on why they’re coming across that way. Also, keep an eye out for sites that are partnered with the search engine.

Uncover the FAQs. A search engine’s FAQ or Webmaster Information may contain a submittal form, or submittal guidance, and it may even give you some hints on how you can optimize your site and/or media components.

Use your research smarts. After you’ve got a handle on what the submittal process and the listings look like, read up on submittal or optimization tips in the SEO info sources. It may be as simple as going to searchenginewatch.com and typing in “video search” or “shopping search.” Don’t forget to check the dates on these articles!

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