Prioritization

First, take a look at the keywords you’ve been actively targeting over the last year and determine whether all your hard work has paid off. Namely, have you moved keywords into positions that bring you qualified traffic?

You may have done everything necessary to optimize your site around your target keywords, but you’re still not gaining traffic or conversions because the environment for a particular keyword is highly competitive. And while moving from the tenth page of results to the third page may signal progress, it won’t bring you the traffic windfall you’re looking for. In fact, research shows that 68% of search users do not go beyond the first page of results, and 92% do not go beyond the third page.

Given that, now may be a good time to put these lackluster performers on the back burner, and instead focus on keywords that hold more immediate promise.

Shifting focus

And which keywords are these exactly? They are the ones that are already producing good rankings for your website, but with a little boost, they could do a lot better. I like to refer to such keywords as “on the cusp.”

Once you’ve identified these words, I recommend segmenting them into three buckets. The first bucket is for keywords that achieve rankings “above the fold” on page one, or what typically accounts for position two, three, or four. The goal for these keywords is to garner position one rankings. The second bucket consists of keywords that produce rankings found “below the fold” on page one. Naturally, the goal is to have these keywords create rankings above the fold. The third bucket is for the keywords that generate rankings at the top of page two, and that you want to see move to page one.

By focusing your optimization efforts around these cusp keywords, you’ll be able to generate a greater incremental lift in traffic in a shorter period of time.

Tactics to create movement

Once you’ve sorted through your cusp keywords, it’s time to examine some tactics to create movement from one bucket to the next.

To that end, your first task is to update your meta titles and descriptions to ensure that these cusp keywords are adequately represented.

The best way to do this is to perform searches in the major engines. This will allow you to study the titles and descriptions of the websites which appear within the top 10 results. Then look for similarities among your findings. For example, do you see the keyword most often as the first word in the titles? Does the keyword tend to show up once or twice in the descriptions?

You’ll have an opportunity to revise your titles and descriptions to bring them more in line with the other sites that rank well; however, don’t just mimic what they do. Instead, get them to stand out with a title and description that provides a compelling call to action.

You should also look to see if those ranking URLs contain the targeted keyword within them. This is an important consideration given that it’s one of the strongest “on-page” variables that determine how well your page may rank. Granted, it may require a lot of work to alter your URL to include these keywords, but it’ll be well worth the effort.

Links are another area that can help push your cusp keywords forward. When was the last time you re-evaluated yours, both internal and external?

First off, let’s consider external links. You need to be mindful that search engines are continuously evaluating and altering the value they assign to links. Take the time to assess yours. When you do, you may find that some of your previous breadwinners are not so valuable anymore.

But don’t stop there. This is also a good time to reach out and re-establish these external linking relationships. In doing so, be sure to request that the anchor text of those inbound links contain the cusp keywords, and if your page or site has changed, ensure that the links point to the desired page. Ideally, you want to perform this exercise periodically so you won’t get into a situation where multiple redirects cause you to siphon off too much value from your inbound links.

In addition, as you re-assess your external links, thoroughly check your directory listings in Yahoo, Business.com, dmoz, or any niche directories where you have a presence. Do they point to the correct pages, and do the titles and descriptions include the cusp keywords? If not, you may need to request a change. Start with listings in Yahoo, as those tend to provide the greatest impact, and the turnaround time on requests is quick.

But what about your internal links, the ones on your own website? Similar to their external counterparts, it’s important to make sure the anchor text of your internal links contains those cusp keywords. And take the time to check for broken links, then fix them and make sure they point to the right pages. If a high percentage of your internal links are broken, it could cost you in the search engines. Specifically, if your site has navigational issues, a search engine will be less inclined to deliver it as a result, as the user experience won’t just reflect poorly on your site, but also on the search engine that took them there.

Overall, regardless of how you experience spring in your neck of the woods, it’s as good a time as any to get your SEO house in order. Think of it as an opportunity to prioritize and focus on those keywords that have the most potential to deliver the greatest results. Doing so could help to produce the windfall you’ve been waiting for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go put away the snow shovel and find my shorts.

Dave Feldman is director of client services for search engine marketing firm iProspect and can be reached at dave.feldman@iprospect.com. The Brand Aid column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

As a search marketer, perhaps you can relate.

Much like our sailor friend, you’re surrounded by what you need—namely, content—which, of course, is great for your search presence. Yet too much of the same content can be… well, hazardous.

A little salt can’t hurt, right?

Thumbing through a retail catalog, you can often find the same merchandise represented in multiple categories. For instance, a particular pair of hiking boots might be found in the Men’s Clothing section, and in the Footwear portion, and maybe even in the Outdoors offering as well.

Not surprisingly, the same holds true for a website. After all, users don’t mind where they find the product on a site, as long as they don’t have to look too hard to find it. However, while a multiple-category strategy may work for the glossy paper ilk, the same approach could prove problematic for a search marketer. Specifically, wouldn’t it be considered duplicate content and carry a penalty?

Yes and no.

There’s really nothing wrong with having multiple versions of a page co-exist on your website. Sure, there’s some redundancy, but it won’t break the Internet. However, the problem arises when the same page lives in different sections on your site AND it has different URLs. Then it’s considered duplicate content by the search engines.

The result? It impairs a search engine’s ability to properly determine the relevance of your site to the product. And if an engine can’t serve the best results, their audience will… um, jump ship. In addition, attempts to game the system by duplicating your pages will get your site flagged and your visibility will suffer. Instead, avoid duplicate content issues and any potential penalties by utilizing a robots.txt or no index tag to keep multiple versions of your pages from being indexed.

The problem isn’t penalties&mdash’it’s link dilution

With that said, however, keep in mind that the duplicate content issue is far less about a ranking penalty than it is about link dilution.

Let’s say you have 30 external sites lined up to provide a link to your site; you just need to tell them what page to link to. If all 30 of those links point to the hiking boots page in the Men’s Clothing section, a good deal of link value will be passed to that page.

However, what happens if those 30 links get divvied-up across three different versions of that page, and are split between Men’s Clothing, Footwear, and Outdoors? Potentially, each page would only get 33 percent of that total link value. Clearly, 100 percent would be better.

Determining which page is the authority, and then directing all of your inbound links there, provides more benefit than trying to divide and conquer. Doing so could mean the difference between being found at the top of the search results and receiving a sales windfall, or being sunk to the depths of the results and getting nothing at all.

Who’s the captain of this ship?

But how do you decide which page is the authority? Staying with our example, should it be the one in the Men’s Clothing section? Or the one in Footwear, or the one in Outdoors?

To decide, first assess the competitiveness of the term you’re targeting. If it’s not very competitive and you believe you can get two similar—but not identical—versions of a page to rank for that term, you can try to optimize both pages equally. I’m not advocating that you attempt to get as many versions of a page into the search results as possible, but there are occasions where it might make sense to go after two versions.

For instance, let’s say you have two pages about hiking boots. One is the general product page, and the other is a promotional page for a limited time offer on the boots. Obviously, you want to optimize the promo page so anyone looking for special offers on hiking boots would find the page with the limited time offer. However, the general product page about hiking boots should also be optimized for people looking for hiking boots outside of any promotional periods.

In most cases though, it’s tough enough to get one page ranking for a term. The best course of action is to decide which version provides the greatest opportunity for revenue over the long term. Then optimize that page, direct all inbound links to it, and block any other versions from being indexed. Remember, there’s no reason to head into a storm if you can sail around it.

While at times you may feel stranded amidst a sea of content that you just can’t seem to make work, don’t resort to tactics that could blow your efforts off course. Avoid creating multiple versions of the same page just to score more listings in the search results. Instead, differentiate your content by tailoring messages to speak to a particular deal or offer, and concentrate your linking efforts on sending value to the page with the power to produce revenue for the long run.

Dave Feldman is director of client services for search engine marketing firm iProspect and can be reached at dave.feldman@iprospect.com. The Brand Aid column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

Get out of debt

Figure out what keywords are causing you to spend too much money. Perhaps you’re not changing bids as frequently as you should be. Utilize day-parting as a way to ensure you are effectively spending at the right times. Determine if affiliates are impeding your ads from showing up, and if they are, get them to cease and desist from bidding on any trademarked or branded terms. If your organization is part of a larger entity, take steps to align objectives so that campaigns between sister companies are not inadvertently bidding against one another and driving up your cost per click.

Get organized

Coordinate an offline ad with a search campaign. I still cannot fathom why large organizations are not mobilizing faster when it comes to incorporating search into their overall marketing plans. They spend thousands of dollars—if not millions—on push marketing, hoping to change a targeted customer’s perception of “want” into “need.” Yet they fail to utilize search to capture the demand they create. This is akin to fishing with a net—with a huge hole in it. According to an iProspect/JupiterResearch user behavior study, 67 percent of searches are influenced by some form of offline marketing, with television and print responsible for 39 percent and 30 percent, respectively. If you’re working with an agency that handles your offline marketing, coordinate a call between that agency and your search firm so the two can start to share data about performance that will make both channels more effective.

Go someplace new

With the introduction of universal or blended search, SEO stopped being just about Web pages. This year, try optimizing a press release for search. If it’s optimized for the proper terms, the release could find its way into the top of the search results. Also, positioning your company as a thought leader—either by contributing editorial content to industry publications, or by creating an RSS feed to distribute content to additional outlets, or by sponsoring a survey on an important industry topic—demonstrates that you are a trusted source of information. That trust will lead to inbound links, and that credibility could get other pages of your site into the top of the search results, too. It’s also a way to achieve visibility on a term that you normally wouldn’t be able to create a typical page of content for.

Spend more time with family & friends

Participate in a social network. You are not going to rank first in Google because three people “digg” your story, or because somebody wrote on your wall in Facebook. However, you will begin to build both visibility and credibility for your company through transparent participation in these networks. If you present yourself as a trusted adviser and dispense good and useful advice, you might even earn a few links out of it—not through solicitation, but rather from good old fashioned valuable content. Not only will that ultimately serve your PageRank well, but it will also generate additional traffic.

Get (your analytics) in shape

Getting your analytics in shape is key. Whether that means upgrading your platform, giving yourself the ability to parse out paid from organic, or tracking conversions to a keyword level. Having worked with a broad range of clients over the years, I have found that the most successful campaigns are the ones where clients have the greatest flexibility to track. If we know what is converting, we can spend more time optimizing around the terms that will bring the greatest returns.

Think about it. Today is only Day 9 of 2008. You’ve got the whole year ahead of you. When December 31st rolls around again, how will you measure success? Hopefully it’ll be by more than just the fit of your pants. Be smart. Make some resolutions that will actually pay off.

As it turns out, a friend of a friend—we’ll call him “Puck”—happens to run the website for one of these teams. Recently, he posted a game recap and included a photo of a fight that occurred during the match-up. Later that evening, he got a call from the NHL. Corporate wanted him to take down the image because the league doesn’t want to promote fighting—they want their brand to stand for good, clean fun. But Puck held his ground. He argued that this is his local market, and that he knows his audience better than corporate does. Hell, his audience likes the fighting aspect. After all, the team is known for its toughness, and this image helps promote their brand. Puck’s position? Unless corporate forces his hand, the photo stays.

Similar corporate vs. franchise battles happen every day in the search engine results, where the two face-off against one another for visibility and visitors. But it doesn’t always have to be such a battle. In fact, clarity can do much to improve the relationship and reduce conflict about search marketing initiatives. Knowing some key elements—such as who owns what content, who has permission to change it, what the consistent message should be across multiple channels, and where consumers are driven—can help determine whether the corporate and franchise search relationship is cooperative or cannibalistic.

Following are some tips to help corporate and franchises have an aligned search strategy:

Determine ownership. Understanding where control resides is a crucial first step to avoiding corporate/franchise clashes about your search marketing initiatives. Most often, organizations will divvy up control in one of two ways. They will permit franchises to run their own websites, but will maintain control by overseeing them—as in Puck’s case. Or, they will run the company domain and incorporate pages for its franchises.

While either scenario works, the first option, separate websites, actually allows your brand to occupy more page real estate in the search results. For example, an insurance agent should have their own dedicated page in an “agents” section on the corporate domain, but they should also be given the opportunity to run their own website for the marketing initiatives they see fit. An insurance agent may not want to send a prospective customer to the corporate site, as they could lose the customer to a different agent in a more convenient location.

Maintain communication. Regular communication between corporate and its franchises is key to having an aligned search strategy—its importance cannot be overstated. Corporate should maintain open communication with its franchisees and demonstrate how its ownership and/or guidance can make things easier for them, and how it can actually improve the efficacy of franchise marketing efforts. For example, when it comes to sales and marketing, franchise owners do it all, so they may not have the time needed to execute the many intricacies of search marketing. Given that, corporate would be wise to provide franchisees with search friendly web marketing guidelines and search fundamentals training. Doing so could help reduce concerns over franchisees’ use of questionable search marketing tactics that could land corporate in the penalty box.

For example, multiple vanity websites used for marketing purposes can cause unnecessary competition in paid search, and could get you penalized in organic search. At best, even if the content is unique across these multiple sites, you’ll be dividing where inbound links (and value from those links) are distributed. This will put a drag on your visibility. Other tactics such as buying and selling links, can potentially affect search engine rankings, and clearly, corporate would not want the main domain to take a hit because of the actions of a franchise.

In addition, if a franchise has the ability to change content on the main domain, there should be some form of approval process in place to make sure any changes are consistent with brand messaging before they go live. This is an important consideration given that different messaging between corporate and franchises in the search results may confuse a potential consumer, and result in neither of the sites getting clicked on. Make sure everybody is on the same page—literally. Special offers and deals should be the same whether they are on the corporate domain or franchise site. If they don’t match, a customer might think more research will uncover another lower-priced option.

Segment campaign elements. Taking the time to segment campaign elements will do much to help develop an aligned search strategy between corporate and its franchises. To begin, assuming there is both corporate and franchise representation, a decision needs to be made about who gets to target which keywords. Keep in mind that how you divvy up keywords for paid search will have budget implications. Overall, corporate should own all major branded keyword phrases, and franchises should not be bidding on general branded terms, as they tend to be less qualified and more expensive. Terms with geographic modifiers such as ‘Boston hotel’ should be open to franchises to bid on in conjunction with corporate. More specific keywords such as ‘Boston airport hotel’ should be left to the franchises to bid on without corporate competition.

In addition, attempt to segment by search intent. A user searching on a very general term is at the beginning of the purchasing process and should be directed to the corporate site for informational purposes. One searching on a term further down the sales funnel, e.g., ‘Boston Sheraton Copley Square’, should be directed to either the franchise’s property page on the corporate domain or to the franchise’s own website. By assigning specific bidding responsibilities for corporate and franchises, you will ensure a more targeted and cost-efficient paid search strategy.

Also, participation in social media outlets should be assigned. Responding to online reviews and ratings should be covered by the franchise, as they are often attributable to a specific hotel. Review and testimonial content should live on franchise sites, as this can help remove some exposure for the overall brand if there is repeated negativity. Top-tier social networking sites like MySpace should be a corporate marketing function. Engaging with the community on smaller, locally-targeted sites like Yelp should be handled by the franchise. In addition to influencing prospective customers when content skews in either a positive or negative direction, social media sites can rank when there is enough content on a given keyword phrase.

Overall, the relationship between corporate and its franchises can be complicated—and at times, even contentious. Clearly, achieving an aligned search strategy between the two is not without its challenges. However, embracing the above tips should help. Alternatively, you can always battle it out on the boards.

P.S. In case you were wondering—the photo stayed. Final score: Puck 1, NHL 0.

Dave Feldman is director of client services for search engine marketing firm iProspect and can be reached at dave.feldman@iprospect.com. The Brand Aid column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land.

Opting not to partner with an aggregator means you’ll forfeit valuable space that your brand could occupy on the search results page—which is no small consideration today. And as the saying goes, if searchers don’t find you, they’ll find your competitor. While this is true for the most part, I’d like to add that they’ll either find you, your competitor, or many times, they’ll find an aggregator.

Search engines employ a practice called “clustering” which limits the number of organic results one domain can occupy to two listings. This means your opportunity to rank one domain in organic results is capped at 20% per page. Combine those two organic results with one paid search ad in the sponsored results, and at best, you will be able to cover about 15% of a total page of search results (2/10 organic + 1/10 paid = 3/20 total).

So if you don’t partner with aggregator sites, how do you increase this number on your own? Your options include optimizing a secondary website, or you could break your site into sub-domains which may be treated as a separate website—depending on the search engine. You could also throw in a paid ad for the secondary site. This would double your page coverage to about 30%, but chances are slim that you’d be able to successfully optimize two sites for a competitive term, and any additional paid ad you have means you’ll ultimately be bidding against yourself.

This is where aggregators can lend a hand. Clearly the upside of partnering with them is obvious as they multiply your sales outlets, but they can also significantly boost your page real estate in the search results. For example, let’s say you’re in the travel business, and have partnered with aggregators to sell your excess hotel inventory or last-minute flight reservations. If your own site shows up in the search results on ‘flights to Miami,’ and an aggregator you partner with also sells seats on your flights and shows up as well, that essentially increases the real estate your brand occupies on that results page. Each of your partner aggregators that show up once in the organic results, or once in the paid results, increases your exposure by another 5%. Further still, some will show up for both paid and organic. Partnering with five aggregators means your brand could garner coverage on over half of the page.

In addition, you can increase the chances of an aggregator showing up on your targeted terms by syndicating your content to them. Helping an aggregator build up supporting content serves multiple purposes—it will distinguish your brand on their site from your competitors, it will help them rank better, and it can also generate incremental revenue as sites are often willing to pay for this content.

However, be mindful that there are risks associated with partnering with aggregators, not the least of which is the chance that your brand message could be misconstrued. This is just one of the dangers of letting others advertise for you. For the most part, these risks are exacerbated by giving away too much to these sites. For example, are you concerned about words like ‘cheap’ or ‘discount’ being associated with your brand? Aggregators will often use these types of adjectives to attract buyers. Given that, you would be wise to police the content of your aggregators’ sponsored ads and organic search listings. If it’s not in line with your desired message, you need to take steps to address it. Put limitations on what other sites can say about your products/services in their page copy, meta titles and descriptions, and paid search ads. Also, be sure to pay attention to in the content of the ratings and review sections of these sites as those pages have the ability to rank on your branded terms. Ultimately, it’s important to take every opportunity to address any inconsistencies and control the message regarding your offerings on these sites.

In addition to employing messaging restrictions with aggregators, you also might want to consider specific offer restrictions. For example, are there certain high-margin products you would rather sell through your website or direct? Are there time-sensitive aspects to consider, such as last-minute deals or promotions? An airline may not want to sell the total allotment of seats too soon because they can squeeze more revenue from last-minute (especially business) travelers. If that’s the case, an airline might want to restrict the aggregator from bidding on certain terms outside of a 7-day window, or from displaying particular promotions in order to maximize revenue per ticket.

Also, keep in mind that while partnering with aggregator sites can do much to increase your page real estate in the search results, it does not necessarily guarantee that you will ultimately get the business. For example, a search result featuring your brand could generate a referral to an aggregator, where subsequently a consumer may end up finding a lower price on a competitor’s product/service. Let me illustrate.

If I have to fly from Boston to Atlanta, chances are I’ll end up flying Delta because they offer the most non-stop flights, and I have frequent flyer status with them. When I perform a search for ‘Boston to Atlanta flights,’ I click on the result that takes me to Delta’s Website where I see that the ticket is $200. However, I won’t just purchase it on the spot. I’ll either go back to the search results or I’ll check another site—an aggregator like Expedia—to see if there is a lower price offered. If a ticket for the exact same flights costs $180, is that enough of a difference to make me purchase it from Expedia instead? In other words, what is my threshold for loyalty? If I purchase directly from Delta, I’ll get additional SkyMiles, which to me is worth paying the extra $20. However, if I leave Delta.com, and go to Expedia and see that AirTran is offering comparable flights for only $120, Delta might lose my business if the price difference is that significant.

While such a situation can be a dilemma, there are ways around it. One possible solution? If Delta were to show me the price that aggregator sites are currently offering for those flights, I’d have no reason to leave Delta.com to look for a lower price. Doing so would not only save me the time of having to check multiple sites, but it also would remove the opportunity for me to be swayed by a competitor’s offer. The idea is to reinforce loyalty—earn extra mileage by booking direct, and save me time by showing that you’re giving me the best deal for these flights, and I’d be more prone to stay on Delta.com and purchase directly.

However, if you cannot provide aggregator prices on your website, there are other options. Perhaps you could implement price matching guarantees and promote this through your search efforts. Should somebody find a lower rate elsewhere, you not only match that rate but offer an incentive to buy direct. Many hotels now offer a best rate guarantee where they’ll match the lowest rate and throw in some additional incentives for booking directly on their website (an additional 10% off, late check-out, upgraded rooms). While many hotel websites have pages that speak to this, the only paid ads that show for ‘best rate guarantee’ are banking and mortgage sites. The opportunity is there.

Overall, partnership and competition with aggregator sites within the search engines is now a fact of life. When your website can realistically only occupy 15% of the search results page on your own, you have to find out who can help communicate your brand message effectively, and who can hurt you. Savvy marketers will work with aggregators when the opportunity arises as a way to not only increase sales outlets, but also help increase page real estate in the search engines. However, partnering with aggregation sites requires that you work closely with them, define limitations of what can be said and targeted, and regularly monitor what they’re saying about your brand.