What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability

What SEO/SEM Professionals Should Know About Website Usability

In an effort to differentiate themselves from competitors, many SEO/SEM firms come up with interesting unique selling propositions (USPs). Some SEO/SEM firms emphasize search engine advertising and create quite useful tools to help manage PPC campaigns. Some SEO firms specialize in training, again creating tools that help newbie and experienced SEO professionals optimize existing web pages. For the past two to three years, I have been watching SEO/SEM firms increasingly focus on the user, specifically offering website usability services.

Although I laud the evolution of SEO/SEM firms to increasingly focus on the user, I admit that I find some of their conclusions and methodologies rather troubling. Recently, I worked with a company who was happy with their SEO firm, but when they showed me the heuristic analysis I was dumbfounded. The SEO firm actually told this company to remove the primary call to action on product pages because it interfered with keyword density. There were countless other mistakes in the heuristic analysis, and it is that report that inspired me to write this article.

Online Annonsering
Internet Marketing

Inside AdWords: Place ads on television with Google TV Ads

Inside AdWords: Place ads on television with Google TV Ads

Television is a great way to reach new customers who might not be familiar with your product or service. Research shows that 37% of online search users were prompted to perform a search as a result of exposure to television advertising.* Now, you can launch a national television ad campaign right from your existing AdWords account.

Google VisualRank

Google VisualRank

Google researchers at a web conference in Beijing announced they work on some kind of PageRank specifically aimed at images. Called VisualRank, the technology was so far only applied to a smaller test set of images, as apparently applying it to all images Google indexed would be too computing-intensive (even arguably the worlds largest super-computer cant do everything imaginable yet). According to the New York Times yesterday, visual rank is an algorithm for blending image-recognition software methods with techniques for weighting and ranking images that look most similar, and in Googles internal scoring tests it achieved far higher quality results.

Online Annonsering

Google AdWords Displaying Quality Score Variables

Google AdWords Displaying Quality Score Variables

Reports are surfacing today that some Google AdWords ads, especially on Google.de (their German TLD), are displaying what may be variables used in determining quality scores: Pscore, mCPC and thresh. The numerical values have been spotted in both sidebar and shaded results.

Internet Marketing

Google Discovers Holy Grail of Image Search But Will it Scale

Google Discovers Holy Grail of Image Search But Will it Scale

Google has a lofty ambition when it comes to image search. The worlds largest search engine hopes to do for image search what it did for regular text search"make it a whole lot more reliable. How it plans to do this is outlined in a new research paper written by two Google scientists.

Internet Marketing

Google Showing Ranking Scores On AdWords?

Google Showing Ranking Scores On AdWords?

Google Will Bank on VisualRank - PageRank for Images [SearchEngineWatch]

Google Will Bank on VisualRank - PageRank for Images [SearchEngineWatch]

On Thursday, Google Research engineers presented a paper at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing on PageRank for Google Images (pdf) to improve search results for photos, art and graphics. The system promises better image results than are currently available when searching in Google Images and may eventually improve Google Universal Search SERPs.

Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Google Product Search Gets More Useful

Google Product Search Gets More Useful

In the past, Google Product Search just showed you results, but did not group stores offering to sell the same product, with reviews and technical specifications. Now, for some searches, Google groups store results, shows reviews on Google and also shows product specifications.

From Online Annonsering

Yahoo Paper: Finding The Local "Center" Of Search Queries

Yahoo Paper: Finding The Local "Center" Of Search Queries

A new research paper from Yahoo and Cornell University -- with search legend Jon Kleinberg as one of the coauthors -- provides a fascinating look at how a search query such as "red sox" or "hurricane deal" can be centered around a physical location -- including one that changes over time.

From Internet Marketing
and Online Annonsering

Yahoo to expand data sharing among friends online | Technology | Internet | Reuters

Yahoo to expand data sharing among friends online | Technology | Internet | Reuters

Yahoo Inc is working to rewire the dozens of services across its site so that users can manage all information about themselves in a single place and share it with friends across the Web.

"We are not building another social network," Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh told more than 1,000 attendees at the Web 2.0 Expo conference in San Francisco on Thursday. "We are building social into everything we do."

The effort is part of a larger plan to make it easier for users to share information about themselves with other Yahoo users and on websites that run applications using Yahoo features, seeking to help the world's biggest Internet media company keep pace with social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

From Online Annonsering

Yahoo to radically open its platforms, boost social networking strategy

Yahoo to radically open its platforms, boost social networking strategy

Yahoo Inc. is swinging the doors of its Web platforms wide open to let outside developers create applications across its network of sites and is radically stitching together its online services under the social profile concept.

The idea is to let the hundreds of millions of people who use its Web mail, instant messaging, calendar, photo management and other online services replicate the social experience that social networks like MySpace and Facebook have made so popular.

This means that Yahoo users will have profiles under which their Yahoo services will fall. They will be able to customize the profiles by adding applications. The profile is also intended to simplify the map of connections among Yahoo users so that they can find one another and interact more easily and efficiently.

From Internet Marketing and Online Annonsering

Search Engine Marketing Blog by ineedhits: Google Serves Up YouTube Videos in Google Maps

Search Engine Marketing Blog by ineedhits: Google Serves Up YouTube Videos in Google Maps

If you have been considering using online video for your local business, then now is as good a time as ever!

Google have announced that they have added the ability to include YouTube videos into Google Maps and Local Business Listings.

Online Annonsering

Yahoo Google Test Successful A Giant Leap for Y

Yahoo Google Test Successful A Giant Leap for Y

Wall Street Journal has reported that Yahoo! Inc, and Google have got closer to a partnership deal after the successful testing of Google advertisements in Yahoo! SERPS (Search Engine Result Page). On April 10th 2008, we had reported to our readers that Yahoo! was going to test Google's ads in its SERPS.

Online Annonsering

Inside AdWords: Improvements to AdWords Conversion Tracking

Inside AdWords: Improvements to AdWords Conversion Tracking

SEOmoz | Content is King, Baby!

SEOmoz | Content is King, Baby!

One of the most important things you can do to help create a successful web site is to build a site that provides a remarkable experience. If we look past the popular phrase "linkbait" (a term I don't like because of its negative connotations), we need to answer the question "Why would someone link to our site?"

Internet Marketing
Online Annonsering

Google Presentations Finally Adds Powerpoint Saving

Google Presentations Finally Adds Powerpoint Saving

Google Presentations has finally added a feature that most thought should have been there at launch: You can now save your presentations as PowerPoint files.

SEO is Not Free Traffic

SEO is Not Free Traffic

SEO has never been, nor will it ever be, free traffic. It takes work, and that comes at a cost. You need to hire staff or allocate internal resources to manage your SEO efforts. You need to enlist an SEO firm or consultant to help identify the opportunities and prioritize them, navigate the minefields, and up-skill your internal team. You need to outfit your in-house team with on the tools of the trade (SEOMoz Pro, Internet Marketing Ninjas, etc.), send them to the conferences (all the SMX conferences, of course!), provide them with training intensives (e.g. SEOClass, SEOTraining), and various other professional development and networking opportunities.

From Internet Marketing
Online Annonsering

Google Website Optimizer Steps Out Of The AdWords Box: Open To All Users & Urchin 6.0 Comes Out Of Beta

Google Website Optimizer Steps Out Of The AdWords Box: Open To All Users & Urchin 6.0 Comes Out Of Beta

Google has announced that AdWords is no longer a requirement for Website Optimizer. In fact, you can now go to google.com/websiteoptimizer and register, for free, to use Website Optimizer, even if you do not have an AdWords account.

Now, you can use Website Optimizer to not just A/B test your AdWords landing pages, but also test your Yahoo landing pages, your banner landing pages, and different elements throughout your web site to improve conversions and desired actions from your users.

From Our CMS system

Hitwise: Google Hits New High; Microsoft & Yahoo New Lows

Hitwise: Google Hits New High; Microsoft & Yahoo New Lows

Last week, Hitwise released the latest statistics for search engine share in the United States for March 2008, showing Google at an all-time high while Microsoft and Yahoo hit all-time lows.

The four major search engines stack up as follows:

* Google: 67.3%
* Yahoo: 20.3%
* Microsoft: 6.7%
* Ask: 4.1%

Vertical Ad Networks Should Get More Money This Year | WebProNews

Vertical Ad Networks Should Get More Money This Year | WebProNews

The results of a new study show that advertisers will be relatively cautious with their money this year, not throwing it at all ad networks indiscriminately. They'll still be spending more than before, though, and vertical ad networks should benefit.
Vertical Ads More Money
Joe Apprendi

Inventory quality, targeting abilities, and site transparency are three of the things advertisers will consider, according to Collective Media. Its results come from about 200 surveys.