More than you may realize, these days many of the blogs you read are actually written for one purpose.

Search Engine Rankings

Often a writer will be given a keyword phrase such as ‘Blog Search Rankings‘ and be told to write a 500-700 word post about that. The sole purpose of this is to help their site rank higher for that search term. The only real way to improve rankings and this is the kicker: is to build great sites.

So, while choosing interesting topics to write about may seem like a better idea than writing about the sites main keywords, the very best way to do this is to write something interesting that ties back into the primary search phrase you wish to rank for.

So for example, if you wanted to write about ‘Blog Search Rankings’ as this post is mainly focused on, my approach in this article that you are reading is to be ‘helpful’ in some manner. It is a ‘how to’ style post that describes something useful that a reader may actually use.

On that note here are some ‘how to tips’ for blog writing that will help with your search engine rankings.

H1 tags

After you post your blog, in FireFox press either ‘Control-U’ or ‘Command-U’ to view the source. Older IE6 or other browser users may need to use the dropdown menu and select ‘View Source’. If your blogging software is configured correctly, hopefully the title of your post will be in an H1 tag. If it isn’t you may consider editing some of your preferences to make this so. The key about H1s is that you should only have ONE per page that highlights the most important keyword phrase for that page. For this post the only H1 tag you will find that is actually rendered is the one surrounding ‘How to Write Blog Posts that Rank Well in Search Engines’ at the top of this post.

H2, H3, H4 tags. - Any sub headings should be surrounded by H2 tags, and tertiary levels of headings should be H3, H4, etc. the further you go indenting. You can use your style sheets to determine what the respective heading will look like.

For example you could put:

<H2 class=”header-2-style”>

if you have a class called ‘.header-2-style’ predefined in your stylesheet.

This is something you can easily do while posting your piece and doesn’t have to be done later by some ‘SEO Expert’.

Link Titles, Title & Alt Attributes for Images

As many of you may already know, when you mouseover an image sometimes descriptive text will be displayed. This is from the ‘alt’ attribute in the <img> tag. More less widespread is the use of a ‘title’ attribute within the <img> tag.

i.e. <img src=”http://www.wpromote.com/affiliates/wpromote.jpg” title=”The Wpromote Logo” alt=”Wpromote Logo”>

Notice how there are both a title and an alt description. These serve two purposes…the title is for google and the alt is for the user who mouses over the image and gets a description.

For Hyperlinks the same concept of a title applies and not many people would ever think to do this intuitively. This is what you should use:

<a href=”http://www.wpromote.com” title=”Wpromote PPC Management Experts” target=”_blank”>Wpromote PPC Management</a>

Every link on your site should have a title. The title tells Google what your links are and will help with your rankings. Now if you want to hyperlink the image above to go to the site in the link example above…it may seem like a lot but this is really what you should put in the source code:

<a href=”http://www.wpromote.com” title=”Wpromote PPC Management Experts” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://www.wpromote.com/affiliates/wpromote.jpg” title=”The Wpromote Logo” alt=”Wpromote Logo”></a>

Here is the same example rendered:

Other Tips

If you use WordPress (I am currently using WordPress to edit this post) depending on which SEO(Search Engine Optimization) related plugins you use there will be options to create custom titles etc. If you use the ‘SEO Title Tag’ plugin from NetConcepts then you will have that option - i’d suggest cutting and pasting the post title in the ‘Title Tag’ field that appears AFTER the post when this plugin is turned on.

Tags

Be sure to add keywords that are in your post to the ‘Tags’ section in WordPress right after the post content section. examples: for this post I will include: Seo Title Tag Plugin, Title Tag Plugin, Blog Seo, Blog Search Rankings, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Wpromote and others. Try to put at least 5 tags in the tag section that are found in your post if possible.

Categories

Make sure you select an appropriate category for your blog post. If you don’t have one in your category list, then simply add one that makes sense and is ‘relevant’ (That word again) to your blog post. You can select more than one category if it applies, for this post I chose, SEO, Internet News and Wpromote. I noticed that there is no ‘blogging’ category so I created one and added it to that as well.

We’re Almost Done!

At the bottom of the page below the blog content post section below the tags and categories is an area for Advanced Options.
Under ‘Excerpt’ here is where you will write the description that comes up in the Google search engines when that post comes up for a result. The average length is 160 characters. You want 2-3 sentences that describe the contents of that specific post and preferable have the main keyword phrases for that page closer to the beginning of the description.

This is VERY important, more important than the link titles (which people never seem to take the time to do, thus making it easier to outrank their sites) and is almost as important as the Title tag for the page.

-Till next time

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There are a plethora of mysteries hidden in Google & Yahoo’s search and advertising algorithms. We here in Account Development have long struggled to understand the precise function of the almighty Keyword Insertion (KWI). KWI is a function which allows a user’s precise search query to be inserted into the headline or body of a text ad. Our research has shown that text ads with KWI have higher Click-Through Rates (CTR) and often perform better than ads without KWI. But in our never-ending quest to write the best ads and build the best campaigns possible, we are constantly running into more precise and complex questions about how (and if) this “Keyword Insertion” function really works.

Let’s review the three Keyword Match Types in Google: Broad, Phrase, and Exact. Exact is rather self explanatory: if you have “used car” as an exact match keyword, it will only be triggered by a search query of “used car.” Any additional words or characters in or outside that search will prevent it from bringing up the ad. So a person searching “used black car” or “black used car” will not see the corresponding text ad for the Exact Match keyword “used car.” Phrase Match is slightly more lenient, allowing words to be tacked on either end of the keyword, as long as the precise word order is preserved. “Black used car” will trigger the phrase match for “used car,” but a search of “used black car” will not.

Then there’s Broad Match, or what I like to call “the necessary evil.” Broad Match is the fail-safe in your keyword lists. If you sell all types of used cars, but don’t want to (or forget to) list every make, model, year, or color, Broad Match *should* be your catch-all for any searches that include those variables. Unfortunately, Broad Match is imperfect by nature. For all the variables that it catches, there will be a few you wish it wouldn’t. Plus, on some longer-tailed keywords, it will occasionally drop one or more of the words, catching inaccurate traffic. All these factors become exponentially more complex when Keyword Insertion comes into play.

The double edged sword of Keyword Insertion is that the increased Click-Through Rate does not necessarily translate to a higher conversion rate. If a text ad headline more closely resembles what a user searched, they will often click on that ad. When it turns out you don’t actually sell “used black car seat covers” or whatever, they will not purchase anything from you, and the click was nothing more than wasted budget. When building large keyword lists meant to capture a very broad range of keywords, one must be especially careful with the KWI. Take the following text ad for example:

That’s a screen shot of an active text ad on Google. The headline clearly has nothing to do with the intended message. I really have no idea how something like this could slip by the person who built or manages this account. My only guess is that the account holder ran a large concatenation and this little gem slipped through editing. Unless there was some sort of malfunction between the Broad Match function and KWI function?

This rather extreme example only highlights the need to test your ads and watch them closely for errors. The entrenched opinion that KWI should be used whenever possible is slowly coming into the light of reevaluation. While it may not have the best CTR, a well written static headline will never steer you horribly off course. Always better to be safe than sorry: when in doubt, leave KWI out!

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Last week, the Account Development department welcomed its newest member, Amir Shoucri. Not surprisingly, Amir’s fresh perspective introduced a compelling blog topic…He wrote:

With all the immunity granted to the ignorant new guy, I’m going to throw this out there – I never clicked on an Internet ad before working here. I realize I’m walking a fine line, and at the risk of subverting what we do, I’ll be upfront about it. Like many people, I associated search-engine advertising with a variety of other negatives – spam, pop-ups, spyware, viruses etc. What’s more, I considered myself sophisticated enough to avoid all the traps set to ensnare the casual web browser. I use search engines; they don’t use me, kind of thing.

That having been said, I will admit to some misapprehensions. I don’t think I understood what a Google ad was until recently. The most I ever thought about it was the time I was discussing my private life in an e-mail and suddenly noticed I was being offered a variety of mental health services. Having now attained some background, I’m fairly impressed with the standards Google maintains for ad style, content, and security.

Web advertising is a pervasive new industry. I’ve worked in other pervasive industries, and all of them felt underappreciated. In television, it was always about the Nielsen ratings (Q: How come no one is watching our show? A: Because, Donnie Wahlberg is in it). In the education field, it was similar (Q: Why does no one value us? A: Because, knowledge makes people unhappy). Determining cause and effect was a game of constant guesswork.

With online ads, however, it seems the proof is in the pudding. If someone clicks on an ad, navigates to a site, and makes a purchase, that to me is literal, definitive evidence that advertising works. This is not the gray area of traditional advertising or sociological academia; the ability to assess is tangible and simple. People, despite what I would have guessed, are clearly clicking on ads.

I get the sense that I’m not alone in my initial misconception of this industry. What impression do most people really have?

After putting some thought to the issues raised by Amir, I wrote this response. Several points probably deserve a lot more attention (see future blog posts) but there’s plenty of food for thought:

Before I joined the Wpromote team, I could have counted on one hand the number of times I clicked on Google and Yahoo ads. Sure, I used the search engines extensively when I was curious about something, or working on a research paper. Google was my homepage for at least two of my four years in college (AltaVista was probably my homepage for the first couple years, if you can cast your memory back that far…) and Yahoo was never far from my address bar, but my cursor never strayed from those organic results.

To this day, every time I talk to someone about what I do at Wpromote, the conversation inevitably turns to organic search. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say “Well, I hardly ever pay attention to the advertisements on (preferred search engine). Can you help raise my position in the search results?” Well, as a matter of fact, we have an entire department devoted to that: Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It will cost you more money and take far more time, but we can help move your site into the elusive and coveted Top Ten.

So then what? Let’s say you have a site that sells hand saws, and we get your site into the Top Ten for keyword searches of “hand saw.” Well, now you’re wedged somewhere between image results, a Wikipedia entry (see future blog entry), an article on “How to Choose the Right Handsaw”, and a few manufacturers websites with far more awareness and visibility. What have we accomplished? A spot in the Top Ten, and little (if any) additional traffic.

Internet advertising continues to struggle with its longstanding reputation for poor user experience. Anyone who’s ever been on a computer has probably dealt with pervasive and intrusive pop up ads. Many have had a computer infected with Spyware and other privacy-invasive software, which sometimes host viruses that render computers virtually worthless. User distrust of online advertising is understandable, if a bit misguided. As the saying goes: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Unfortunately, many internet users categorically ignore or dismiss all forms of advertising they see online.

Still, I don’t hear anyone suggesting online advertising is overvalued. When News Corp acquired MySpace for $580 million in 2005, you could hear jaws hitting keyboards worldwide. Now analysts are suggesting the site would be worth $15 billion in today’s market! Elsewhere, advertising megafirms are producing million dollar “Viral Videos” for clients to flood the web and rack up view counts on YouTube, all in the hope that they will translate to increased sales. Some of these videos don’t even feature the client’s name, logo, or slogan, but hope the subject on screen will subconsciously register with viewers. The traditionally held concepts of brand identity and recognition in the advertising industry are being shaken to their foundations as the World Wide Web continually repositions and reinvents itself.

Right. So we’ve got subliminally encoded videos and privacy-invasive software logging our every move online to figure out the way we think. Is that what people want? Seems to me that anytime an ad pops up in my face, even if (read: especially if) it’s advertising a product I want, it will only evoke Orwellian fears in my mind. People don’t want to be spied or preyed upon; but, when they want something, they want it as quickly and conveniently as possible. Which brings them right back to where we started: their trusted search engine.

Having said all this, the fundamental issue still remains: the Google and Yahoo advertising departments could stand to hire their own PR reps. Should they advertise their own advertising? How can they regain the trust of internet users who clearly want the advertised products, but fear the links will implant some sort of tracking software on their hard drives? For one thing, they can continue to offer the user-friendly advertising they’ve become known for. The cream always rises to the top. More and more people will eventually catch on to what’s happening on the right hand side of their search results pages. It certainly helps when online businesses have well built, highly targeted, and closely managed ad campaigns. I, for one, have come to discover that I’m actually more likely to find what I’m looking for under the sponsored links.

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The business of search advertising is booming.

Most interestingly, this boom does not appear poised for a reversal anytime soon or even a slowdown. Granted, no boom can last forever and it is always wise to be looking toward the future, however, Microsoft’s recent comments regarding search advertising that, “In the next several years, it will not be as much of a driver [of growth],” seem suspect. Microsoft’s Senior Vice President Brian McAndrews recently stated that the focus of online ads will be slowly shifting away from search and onto more display-oriented ads.

The landscape of online advertising is ever-changing and there is merit that the display market is ripe for expansion, due, in part, to the growing ubiquity of programs like Adobe Flash that provide an excellent vehicle for display ads. Despite all this, though, there seems to be overwhelming evidence that search advertising is here to stay and, at best, will coexist alongside a growing display advertising market. Though the search advertising boom may slow down, the amount of people in the US and abroad using the search engines is likely to continue to expand in the coming years. Additionally, there has yet to be an adequate substitute for the search engines when it comes to finding what you want online, be it information, services or products.
The always even-handed and intelligent guys over at Search Engine Land ask an insigthful question:

“Is this a sign of Microsoft giving up on competing with Google in the search ad space?”

Perhaps Microsoft isn’t counting on the demise of search at the hands of display after all. Could it be that Microsoft is simply waving the white flag in the search advertising arena and touting the inevitable emergence of display advertising in hopes of generating buzz? After all, they do have an advantage over Google in the display advertising market. This is hardly the case in search, where Google bolsters it dominance with every passing day. Is Microsoft just praying that people will buy into this announcement simply because they are Microsoft?

It’s difficult to say for sure, however, I, for one, am still bullish on search. My job does depend on it. Even still, I feel that an objective analysis would rule in concert with me. There is still no viable competitor to the concept of search. At best, display advertising would be complimentary to search ads; there is no reason to believe that the rise of the importance of display ads would supplant the importance of search ads. Couple this fact with the rapidly increasing population of search engine users and search advertising appears guaranteed to remain an important medium of marketing for years to come.

Business may not always be booming, but without search advertising, it will be tough to get your business to boom on display ads alone.

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Last week Nielsen/Netratings released the August 2007 results on the top 10 search providers in the United States.

Not surprisingly, Google continues to reign supreme, taking home 53.6% of searches and recording a 39.8% year-over-year growth in total searches. According to Nielsen, they recorded nearly 4.2 billion searches — in August alone. That amounts to nearly 50 billion searches a year, a number which is simply impossible to fathom. That averages out to over 166 searches in Google annually for every adult, child, and baby in the United States.

Following not even close to the heels of Google was Yahoo, tallying a 19.9% share of searches.

The biggest gainer in the bunch was MSN, which recorded over a billion searches in August, and had 69.8% year over year growth. They came in third with a 12.9% share of searches.  I can only assume that this massive jump is due to the release of the Windows Vista OS, which come loaded with MSN search as the default search preference for users.

Looking at these numbers, it is hard to fathom anybody truly challenging Google’s lead. There are still plenty of ways that Google can trip up, from the recent privacy concerns to simply the law of large numbers preventing Google from continuing such absurd growth (though this still does not diminish their market share, just potentially their sky-high stock price).

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In the same week that Google got into bed with Capgemini to help it break into the business application market, MSN criticized Google’s ability to produce such programs up to the standards that consumers are used to seeing from companies like (oh, I don’t know) Microsoft, for example. CNET News covers the blow-by-blow in wonderful detail, however, I did want to highlight one quotation in particular from a Microsoft rep in an address from Monday:

“We believe competition is good for customers and the industry. That said, customers tell us that our solutions deliver the ease of use, reliability and security that enterprises need.”

Let’s pause here. Okay, have you stopped laughing yet?

You don’t have to be Steve Jobs to know that the one thing that Microsoft cannot tolerate is competition. Well, let me rephrase that: Microsoft loves competition, just not competition that it cannot trample, buy out or render obsolete through immense investment in R&D. Okay, let’s proceed with more of the quotation:

“[Google's] enterprise focus and now apps exist on the very fringe, and in combination with other fringe services only account for 1 percent of the company’s revenue. What happens if Google executes poorly? Do they shut (them) down given it will (affect) them in a minimal and short-term way? Should customers trust that this won’t happen?”

Touché, Microsoft. This is truly a sound criticism and, to be sure, no company knows more about a service suffering as a result of low priority than Microsoft. Working in the sphere of search engine marketing, we deal with Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN adCenter on a daily basis. Microsoft projections for Q3 indicate that the entire medium of Online Services will generate less than 5% of the gross revenue for the quarter; MSN adCenter is one of the several components of Microsoft’s Online Services division. Perhaps this is why MSN adCenter lags in every conceivable area behind Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing when it comes to its interface, its customer support and its ability to deliver an efficient advertising experience to its clients. Clearly, Microsoft–the great juggernaut–doesn’t lack the intelligence or the resources to make adCenter into a reasonably usable product. Perhaps they just don’t see search as a priority; perhaps Microsoft doesn’t care.

The criticism of Google’s corporate application services (known as Google Apps Premier Edition or “GAPE“) have already been deflected by Google’s reps, one of which described it as “at best, cheeky.” Microsoft, which used to have such a knack for outworking, outwitting and generally outdoing its competition for so long, is finally running into some of that “competition” it believes in so strongly. Explorer loses ground to Firefox every quarter; Apple is as hot as it’s ever been; the Motorola Q and Microsoft Zune were viewed as underwhelming at best; MSNBC continues to be super-boring and to suffer bad ratings.

For centuries, the Romans suffered attacks from barbarians at the outskirts of the empire, winning a few battles here, losing a few there, never feeling truly threatened in the capital. But now, for the first time, a real threat to the heart of Rome seems imminent. Google, a considerably smart, efficient and hungry competitor is bringing the battle to Microsoft’s doorstep: desktop applications. Now, I’m not saying that GAPE will replace Office or that the two can’t possibly coexist, however, I will say that it will certainly be interesting to see if Google can succeed in this arena the same way it has in every other arena in the world (and out of the world!).

So far, Microsoft has responded with weak speculations that Google’s apps might not prove reliable at some nebulous future date. If (but more likely, when) GAPE proves a viable alternative to the antiquated Office applications, though, what will Microsoft have to say?

More importantly, what will Microsoft have to do?

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