Follow Us
Facebook Twitter Linkedin
    Hyperdog Media Logo
    Contact Us

    Web Marketing

    Web designers must factor in the growing impatience of web surfers

    by

    Website visitors have never been more impatient, and I’m the worst. Just today, I was looking up the lyrics to a song. I clicked on the site in #1 position(Like 90% of the rest of the world), but it was too slow. Before I even left the Google SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages), I clicked on the link in position 2. I’m going to bet I’m not the only impatient soul looking for lyrics… or even more important things(as if!). Lucky, mother Google(our gentle overlord) is paying attention. One of the items mentioned in seomoz’s recent survey of perceived ranking factors is the availability of the server hosting a site. In this case lyricbarn, or whatever they were called, lost a visitor and a potential adsense click or two(Ads are fun to click). Web Designers – Yeah, you – Reduce your page load times and keep visitors!

    5 web design & SEO tips from the world of PPC

    by

    Many view the worlds of Pay Per Click Advertising and Search Engine Optimization as opposites. While they are certainly very different, the goals are similar: bring eyeballs(with wallets) to your site and make it easy for them to buy.  Here are 5 tips to improve your SEO based on lessons from PPC. 1. Converting keywords Some keywords convert into sales better than others. Use your analytics to discover which keywords are bringing you sales, then target them with your SEO campaign. PPC(Pay-Per-Click) ads are a wonderful testbed to discover those converting keywords if you are pressed for time. 2. Your title and metadescription are your ad When composing your titles and metadescriptions, remember they will be shown in the search engine result pages. It’s like having an advertisement to click, but without Google’s AdWords rules. Always remember you are competing against the other pages in the SERPS(Search Engine Result Pages) – who will get the click? 3. Landing pages It’s great to optimize for your homepage, but setup some (even more relevant) landing pages and be sure they get some of the inbound links you are building. 4. Optimize landing pages for different steps in the buying process As visitors reach your site, think about what step they might be at in their buying process? Are they conducting preliminary research?  Give them links to bookmark your content, send it to a friend, or signup for your newsletter.  Is their search so specific that they are probably ready to buy? Now is the time to wave the free shipping! 5. Split Test Internet marketing is measurable. Why not setup split tests when you design your web pages? Create a couple of similar pages(avoid duplicate content) and use your analytics to measure performance. When your sample size tells you which one is better, adjust the worst of the two and measure again. Or create a third page. Hey, why not? HMTL is still free.

    9 Common Web Design Mistakes Prevent Google From Indexing Your Site

    by

    Web Designers frequently destroy their clients’ chances of ranking well in Google, without even knowing it! Here are three common mistakes that can ruin a client’s chances of ranking well in Google, Yahoo or MSN – simply by preventing the site from being indexed! Search engines follow regular text links, but web designers like to use these unfriendly search engine navigation methods: 1. JavaScript Menus Search Engines do not follow links reliably in JavaScript, if at all. 2. Imagemaps Search Engines cannot see the image, and so cannot classify the relevance or topic of the link. Lesser search engine robots do not even attempt to follow imagemap links. 3. Image Links / Rollover links These links frequently contain JavaScript, but also are difficuly for search engines to classify. 4. JavaScript popups Search Engines do not follow JavaScript reliably, and do not seem to like popups at all! 5. “Jump menus” These pulldown menus are usually submitting a form. If the form target is sent GET requests, there is a chance that the links will be followed in some manner, but again – this isn’t reliable navigation for Search Engines. 6. NOSCRIPT embedded links We were told that content in NOSCRIPT tags is for those visitors that have JavaScript off. But if you were told this means search engines, you were told wrong! This HTML tags has been abused by spammers early on, and search engines do not reliably follow navigation within these tags. 7. Frames – they’re rarely done in a search friendly manner More on the “right way” in a later post. Frames are challenging for search engines, and we have recently seen Google penalizing framee-based sites, perhaps due to the usability challenges they can present. 8. Java Java cannot be executed by search engines. Many early rollover effects relied on Java, but the navigation cannot be read by search engine robots. 9. Flash Flash navigation cannot be followed by search engines. Splash pages can become a deadend for search engines, and alternatives to Flash navigation should always be given. So what can you do to be sure that search engines will crawl your site? We’ll have answers in a future post, but a frequent supplement to websites that use the above techniques – meant almost entirely for search engines – is a set of footer links for seach engines to follow.

    7 untimely ways for a SEO to die

    by

    In ancient Rome, the ghosts of the ancestors were appeased during Lemuria on May 9. Not many people know that, and even fewer care. But in the spirit of Lemuria, we offer seven untimely ways a SEO can die(It’s a dangerous world out there, and also I’m low on blog posting ideas): – Bitten by search engine crawlers. – Trampled by googlebots(This is actually the best way to go, if you have to). – Trip over a HTML tag someone forgot to close. (This was funnier last night when I thought of it – go figure) – You get (google)whacked while visiting a bad link neighborhood. – You’re doing the googledance, slip on a banana peel and hit your head. Certainly I’m not the only one who knows the googledance? Please submit your videos if you know it: googledance@hyperdogmedia.com. – You receive a suspicious package in the mail, and it turns out to be a googlebomb. – Setting linkbait traps and you get an arm caught. Please submit any other ideas you might have via email: lemuria@hyperdogmedia.com. So strike up that pun machine, it’s Friday! Update: Debra just suggested you could “overdose on link juice” – if only!

    Google Hell: How the supplemental index can kill a company

    by

    Google Hell is a term being used to describe a sudden, far drop in a website’s ranking on Google. The ranking is usually for an important – or many different important – keyword terms. I’m pleased an article on Google Hell being covered in the mainstream press. It’s a phenomenon known to main online businesses, tied heavily to changes in the Google algorthym. Some of the excellent points in the article: The criteria for Google’s Supplemental Index can be vague. “Grey-area” techniques are sometime necessary to compete on the internet with larger stores. Duplicate content penalties exist! Newly created sites are especially vulnerable to falling into the supplemental index. Buying links may now be a deciding factor in whether your site ends up in the supplemental results. The article quotes Jim Boykin and Micheal Gray. Besides the great sources, it is refreshing that businesses are starting to see the importance of search engine marketing to the bottom line.

    3 things NOT to do: The importance of titles in SEO

    by

    Sometimes webdesigners get low blood sugar, or suffer minor head injuries. The effect? Bad HTML title tags. Title tags are an important piece of real estate on your page. In properly structured HTML, it’s the first chance for you to tell human prospects and search engine visitors what your page is about. Depending on the search engine, page titles are someytimes shown prominently is results – your page is likely to be passed up if it doesn’t look relevant to the potential visitor’s search. Think about your page title as an advertisement for your website! Since I’m feeling snarky today, here are three things NOT to do when creating your title tags: 1. “Welcome to our website” It sounds like a friendly greeting for your human visitors, but it completely ignores the wonderful gift that a title tag can be. A title tag is a chance to tell both human and search engine visitors just how helpful your content is. Use this chance to target keywords that BRING and CONVERT traffic. 2. “Unititled Page” If your web designer is using Dreamweaver, hope that they are properly caffeinated when they are working on your page. Otherwise, they may forget to change your HTML title tag from the default. Don’t expect quality traffic when you are one of the almost ONE MILLION pages that have “Untitled Page” as their title. 3. “Welcome to Adobe GoLive” You can probably guess where this default page title came from. Check out the ONE MILLION crappy page titles. Oh, that’s neat: version 6 is out. I think we can see what they DIDN’T improve. What SHOULD you do in your title tags? Keywords, focused sets of keywords. More on that in a later – and less snarky – posting.

    4 Google Adwords Tips: Save money by excluding visitors

    by

    Google Adwords opens your advertisement up to a vast audience. Sometimes it’s an audience that is a little too vast. You can save tremendous amounts of money on adwords by excluding the wrong audience: 1. Exclude surfers during the wrong time of day If your product or service is primarily marketed to businesses, be sure to turn off your ads during off hours. Business products and services are only sought during business hours, and there is little need to show ads in evenings and on weekends. 2. Never use broad match Broad match can be a horrible waste of money. If your broad match is for red widgets, your ad will come up in searches that include the word red, and searches that include the word widgets. With so much of the wrong traffic – searching for red gadgets, red ipods, etc. – there are bound to be costly clicks upon your ad. Instead of using broad match, use phrase and exact match. This will help save your clicks for visitors that might actually buy your product or service. 3. Exclude keywords that are unrelated For most any product, you can exclude some keyword. If you sell boats, you should exclude the word “toy” from most of your ads. Be creative, search Google and look for negative keywords. 4. Exclude other countries Make sure you are not showing ads in other countries. Some continents are also notorious for being involved in PPC fraud. More tips to save money with Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing! Get Joy Milkowski’s “Amazing Results with Google AdWords” course – it pays for itself! Or you can continue throwing extra money to Google. 🙂

    Five Ways To Save Money using Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing

    by

    If you are using Pay Per Click advertising with Google or Yahoo, you are probably aware of what it feels like to light money on fire. If you have a limited amount of money, you get a bad feeling in your stomach. Google and Yahoo have two main ways on displaying the advertisements you are paying for: to searchers, and across their content network. The content network consists of web pages that may have articles containing your keywords, and it is the focus of our five tips. You see, these content ads are shown to a completely different audience than search ads. Search ads are usually shown to visitors actively engaged in the buying process. Whether they are doing preliminary research, evaluating features, or comparing prices, search visitors are on a completely different wavelength than the group being shown your content ads. Here are some tips to make sure your Content ad campaign is as effective as possible: 1. Treat your content ad completely different from your search ad First of all, consider placing your content ad in a new campaign. You want to keep it separate from your search ad, and let it evolve in it’s own direction over time. Don’t let it get too close to your search ad – keep them separated! Be sure to use different ad copy and ad titles: Everything about your content ad should be different than your search ad. 2. Setup Google link alerts to see where your ads are showing Want to know where your ads are showing? Of course you do – It tells you where your money is being burned spent! Sign up for Google Alerts for the search term “domain.com” Using this service, you’ll receive email alerts whenever Google comes across your ad. Sometimes, you will see your ad has shown up on a page that you don’t necessarily want it to. Google’s guess may sometimes be wrong. After all, “Pad Printing” doesn’t always refer to printing on notepads. You should log back into Google AdWords – or Yahoo Search Marketing – and exclude that site from your list of allowed sites on which to show ads. 3. Use different display URLs to split test Your display URL is part of the advertisement. Google recognizes this, and so allows you to choose a URL different from the actual location to display to your prospective visitors. Try different display URLs and watch the results: Is one getting a better “Click Through Rate”? Improve the worst of the two, and test some more. 4. Split test your landing pages, too It might also be that traffic from certain content ads converts better than others. Set up a split test with two identical content ads, but send visitors to two different “landing pages”. These landing pages are just the destinations that your ad leads visitors to. They might be named “Contact-Us.html” and “Contact.html”, if you are selling a service. Using Google Analytics, you can sometimes see which landing page converts best into a visitor clicking your “contact us” form. 5. Make sure display URLs also redirect Google crawls through javascript links, and we’ve seen several cases where links from AdWords get into Google’s index. The URL that you choose for Google to display may actually direct traffic right to your site! We call this effect “PPC leakthrough”, because these links are leaking out of the adwords system and into Google’s main index. For example, on our myKarateStore.com advertisement for “Wing Chun Dummies”, we use “http://www.myKarateStore.com/dummy/” as the URL displayed in the ad. Even though that page is not the exact location Google’s AdWords system directs visitors to, we make sure it goes somewhere meaningful. More tips to save money with Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing! Get Joy Milkowski’s “Amazing Results with Google AdWords” course – it pays for itself.

    Reducing page load times

    by

    With the ever increasing impatience of internet visitors, it is important that pages load as fast as possible. Here are some quick tips we implement when developing websites to keep the page size to a minimum: 1. CSS and Javascript should be in external files. This way, they are cached after the first page is visited. 2. For large images that cannot be optimized any further, load a placeholder and update it with the full version after the page has loaded. 3. Get faster hosting. 4. Use CSS instead of tables for layout. 5. Be a minimalist. Do you really need a sound on the home page? Are animations really needed to convey your message?

    YouTube as marketing channel

    by

    Brian Wiener has an interesting post over at AdAge: YouTube as marketing channel. I agree that the TV Networks should be controlling their content by distributing it themselves: 1. Full Episodes should be available online(with Ads, of course). NBC’s Heroes will probably never be bootlegged on Youtube, because there is no need for it to be. 2. Small clips – 2 minute highlight clips – should be purposefully uploaded everywhere on the web. These previews and teasers are perfect to drive increased traffic and gain exposure. I also agree that search optimization should be key. Networks should host blogs to encourage as much juicy user-generated content as possible. And by using search friendly link structures throughout their sites, these media empires could rise to the top of search results – right where their audience expects to find them!