Track Santa

I guess I'm just a kid at heart. Every year I go to the Norad Track Santa website and watch Santa's progress as he delivers gifts to all of the good children of the world (hopefully myself included.)

This year, MSNBC is running a neat commentary on Santa's travels. Then, if you really want to get into this, you can go to the SantaGPS site and get some tracking software for your computer. I haven't tried that yet, but let me know if you do.

Have a fun & peaceful Chistmas!

Happy Holidays!

Wishing You A Peaceful Holiday!

Claudiadot Search Engine Marketing

Btw, Search Engine Roundtable is tracking all of the holiday search engine logos. Enjoy!

Snow In New Mexico

We don't often get a lot of snow here in the Albuquerque area of New Mexico, but today we did. Reminds me a bit of Wisconsin, where I lived before moving here in 1989.

Site Usability and SEO

• Is your website interface easy to use for your potential customers to use?

• How easily can your customers find your products and complete a purchase?

• Does your content answer your customer’s primary questions, clearly explain what you offer and what they can do on your site?

• Can a visitor to your website quickly and easily find what they are looking for?

What do these things have to do with SEO? I am finding that strict SEO falls short of providing all of the results that a website owner wants and needs. SEO is valuable in sending quality traffic to your site, but what happens once they get there is just as important. Is that traffic going to stay and convert or is it going to leave when it can’t easily and quickly find the information it wants?

As an SEO professional, if I look at the Big Picture, I have to look beyond traditional SEO and include Site Usability in my service toolset. It’s not enough to simply optimize a site for a high search engine position and drive traffic to a website. Site owners want conversions – sales, registrations, leads. If the traffic does not convert for the owner, it hasn’t done any good at all. I strongly believe that it is also my responsibility to include specific website usability optimization elements that will increase visitor satisfaction and increase customer conversions.

In the future, I'll be looking at this issue more in depth, but in the meantime there is a lot of excellent information available on website usability issues and I will list some of my recommended sources here:

- Jakob Nielsen’s Website has a huge wealth of information from the “king of usability”.

- Netmechanic.com has a useful Web Site Usability Checklist.

- WebsiteTips.com has a good Usability Section with articles and tutorials.

- Steve Krug has published a great book “Don’t Make Me Think – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability” that is a fast read and worth every minute of it. You can purchase his book on Amazon.com (make sure you get the updated 2^nd edition).

New Google Update - Is There or Isn't There?

The big question looming right during the Holiday shopping season is if Google is in the process of updating. At least two forum threads are discussing this possibility: DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld , where Matt Cutts (kind of) denies anything big happening. I personally don't see any significant changes to Google ranking for any of my client sites, so I'm inclined to think that this is nothing to make a big deal about. But, we will see.

By the way, here is the link to Matt Cutts' blog (where there isn't any mention of a Google update).

Claudiadot

Bear

In memory of Bear - my "Honey Bear" who passed away October 17, 2006 at the age of 13.
I will miss her terribly.

Google Webmaster Central

Google has changed the name of it's Sitemaps Service to Webmaster Central and has added some new tools that can be quite helpful in answering that question I hear all the time, "why hasn't Google indexed all the pages of my site?" You can find Google Webmaster Central here.

There is a new Preferred Domain tool, which will allow you to choose either www.yoursite.com or yoursite.com (without the www prefix). You no longer will need a 301 redirect for Google (although you still do for other search engines), since Google will see that the two domains are actually one.

You can also now see a detailed Crawl Error report for the past two weeks and download search term query stats in CSV format. There are additional tools available at Webmaster Central that can be extremely valuable for your site indexing questions or problems.

Google has a new blog for webmaster communication here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
According to Google's Vanessa Fox, "We'll be blogging here about our webmaster tools, the Sitemaps protocol, and other topics related to crawling and indexing sites." Her post also mentions the promise of new features coming in the future, so this should be an exciting "Google-watch" time for all of us.

I'm happy to see these new features from Google. It's well worth checking out and I'm looking forward to what may be coming in the future.

Keyword Research

As I get ready to begin work on a huge keyword research project, I have been thinking about how to best organize this and exactly what tools I will use. I thought it might be helpful to list some of the best keyword research tools here.

As far as free tools are concerned, there are just a few I find valuable:

• Digital Point Solutions' Keyword Suggestion Tool - uses Wordtracker & Overture results
• Overture Keyword Selector Tool
  
• The Google Adwords Keyword Tool

As for paid keyword research tools/services, I do find that Wordtracker ($51.83/mo. - one day subscription is $$7.77) is important. I have also used Keyword Discovery, which costs $49.95 per month. There have been times when I can find better, more relevant terms with this tool than with Wordtracker and the more I use this tool, the better I like it.

Put together, all of these tools give me a good idea of the best search terms to use. I know that there are some other free tools out there, some using Keyword Discovery results, but I find that for the sake of time and efficiency, I'm better off using the paid Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker programs along with the free tools I've mentioned above.

If you think I've missed an important keyword research tool, feel free to leave a comment and let us know about your favorite.

I almost forgot this. Aaron Wall has an extremely indepth article that reviews these and many more research tools here. It is well worth reading.

Figuring Out The Blog

This is not the easiest thing in the world to figure out. I'm trying to modify my blog template so that you can subscribe to it from the Links, but I'm not having much luck. It seemed to work at first, but now I'm not seeing it.

SEO & Trust - Some Thoughts....

It was bound to come to this. A rainy Saturday night in New Mexico and I'm starting a Blog. Oh well, someday I'll get a life.

I read an interesting article tonight about the Google Trustbox that got my thinking about clients who want to buy a new domain and compete with the "big guys". The article by Stuntdubl, The Trust Knob is WAY too High - Google Trustbox, talks about how successful SEO requires a "Crusty trusted domain + content", when a few years ago, it was "Content + high PR links".

A very interesting article and I can't say that I disagree with the points made. However, I do think there is hope for the "new guy" with a new domain and lots of great content and a good, solid linking program. I think that a lot depends on the industry or niche - the amount and type of competition - the new website faces. I also think that a lot of very good, deep content on a new site will win over an old domain site with stale, weak content. In this sense, content is still king. But, the bar has been raised. There is no doubt about this. The days of throwing up a website with a bit of content, getting a lot of high PR links and waiting a short time for the money to start rolling in are long gone. However, what I really think is most important is that a good, solid business model will win over one that is not as solid. It takes more than a website, optimized or not, to make a good business. And, it's good business that it's really all about. Having a Trusted Business is more important than having a trusted domain. And, it does take time to build trust in a business - Internet-based or otherwise.

Claudiadot Search Engine Marketing