My last post explored the possible differences between Bing’s new algorithm and Google, affirming some commonly cited variances and discovering others that had little or no evidence. Though there were some confirmed differences between the way Bing and Google determine the rankings of natural results, they would probably have little impact on search engine optimization tactics for two reasons:

1. Bing algorithm is likely to change soon, so any gains from, for example, changing URLs to include keywords could be reversed in the near future.
2. Bing does not account for enough traffic to shift focus from optimizing for Google’s algorithm.

Bing’s new algorithm has limited effects on day-to-day SEO; however, the new features of Bing’s search engine results pages (SERPs) have a clear impact on organic search strategy.

New functions like Best Match, Document Preview, and Quick Tabs provide additional spaces where sites should aim appear. Updates of old features, like Local and Shopping, mean that the some of the processes have changed from MSN and Live search. The following sections discuss new and updated features as well as the changes to online strategy that will help leverage these features.

Quick Tabs & Categorized Results

What they are: Quick Tabs (pictured to the left) are the handful of links at the top left corner of a SERP, where categorized results appear for very broad searches to break them up into more niche queries. The same longer-tail searches often appear in both places, but Quick Tabs include both these longer-tail searches and links to specific Bing services (such as Images, News, Shopping, and Videos).

Strategy: Use these spaces for discovering new keywords to target. Take note of the Quick Tabs that show up for your broadest keywords (those with the most search volume), these Bing services and deeper pages may be traffic-driving positions. For example, a Bing search for “electric wheelchairs” brings up only one Quick Tab, Videos. Assuming that 1-3% of users searching that phrase look for videos, a site that sells electric wheelchairs can gain extra visitors simply by creating a YouTube video.

 
Best Match

What it is: When Bing has an extremely high confidence rate (for example, on a search for “Sears”), it will return one result at the top of the page with the text “Best match.” A best match also gets 8 links to deeper sites in the page and an internal search form. Local companies can get it too, but not all of them–Cavender’s, a western wear store, gets a best match, whereas Amy’s Ice Creams does not.

Strategy: Be sure your URL and Title Tags contain your company name – it is unlikely that a best match will ever return for a non-branded term like “hammers.” Include the company name in the Alt tag of the header image or logo that appears on every page. Add an internal search to your page and make sure your sub-pages are both prominently listed in the main navigation and given higher priority in your XML sitemap. Lastly, if your site is a local brick-and-mortar, ensure that Bing knows your physical address by creating a local listing (and, of course, associating your URL with this listing).

Document Preview

What it is: Document Previews appear when a user mouses over a listing, then mouses over the orange circle that pops up to the right of the listing. It pulls information (usually body copy) from the page to populate this window. SEO must now ensure that the information coming up in the pop up window is both informative and engaging – that is, it will both let the users know exactly what to expect (to minimize unqualified traffic) and entice users to click on the link (to draw in qualified traffic). The above example, Nike, failed to do so.

Strategy: Determine the specific content that Bing is pulling from your site to populate its Document Preview. It could be as complicated as text within a Flash file or even text within a deeper page, but is most likely from the beginning of a CSS division, or <DIV> for the coding-inclined. Bing seems to like short paragraphs and bulleted lists. Modify this text to be, again, both informative and engaging.

Instant Answers (Update)

What it is: Like Google, Bing provides very specific information on the search results for certain types of search queries (i.e., currency conversion on Google or flight information on Bing). Bing’s instant answers capabilities are vastly improved from those of MSN and Live Search, providing these types of results for a much wider range of queries.

Strategy: Although appearing in the Instant Answers could potentially drive traffic and increase brand recognition, becoming one of these partners is most likely outside of the scope of SEO and probably involves direct communication with Microsoft programmers. An e-commerce or otherwise primarily commercial site has very little chance of becoming a source of information for Instant Answers. Sites that serve as informational databases on a given topic could, however, enter some sort of partnership with Bing in which they are the sole provider of a type of data. Comstock, for example, gives Bing its quotes for stock ticker searches, American Telephone & Telegraph provides information about area codes, and FlightStats enables Bing’s instant answers for flight information.

Bing Local Listings (Update)

What it is: Also an update from an MSN and Live Search feature, Bing Local Listings change the way information about businesses are presented and improves review aggregation. Bits of reviews are categorized by keyword, as seen in the example above. For example, Bing pulls comments regarding wait times from reviews on sites like Yelp and provides aggregated ratings for wait times at restaurants. Users first fill out basic information about their business, which will be used to check whether the business is already in Bing’s database, before they add photos, videos, hours, and other information. Much like Google, users can then assign categories (up to 6) that will be used to help determine what type of business is being submitted (unlike Google, custom categories cannot be created). A snail mail piece with a verification code will be sent, and listings usually update within a few days of verification.

Strategy: The main change in strategy here is that the Webmaster Center no longer provides the link to submit a local business. That form is now at this URL. It is not linked to any of Bing’s main pages, so some users who have used this feature in the past may now have trouble finding it. Also, the new keyword categorization of portions of reviews from sites like Yelp means that the wording of reviews is very important. For example, a user mentioning a short wait time would increase the average rating for that metric on the listing pictured above. Lastly, Microsoft has initiated a partnership with Yellow Pages local listings so paid sponsors are listed above normal listings. Paid local listings link directly to the business’s page on YellowPages.com.

Bing Shopping (Update)

What it is: Bing, like Google, can return e-commerce results along with regular organic listings. The results lead to a landing page that shows various products related to a search term with pictures, descriptions, prices, and links to retailers. However, two weeks before the release of Bing (May 15, 2009), Microsoft ended its Live Search Product Upload feature. Therefore, adding products is no longer a user-end process for Bing (but it still is for Google, which uses Google Base).

Strategy: Since Microsoft has assumed the responsibility of uploading product information to its search engine, it is also no longer a free service. One must contact a Microsoft sales representative to discuss being added to this section of the site, which is apparently based on a CPC bidding model. During this process, a site owner can also decide to participate in Bing’s Cashback program. Looking at the proportion of Cashback offers to total retailers on Bing Shopping; it looks like Microsoft salespeople are enthusiastically pitching the Cashback partnership. The strategy for being listed in Bing Shopping has shifted from previously being arguably related to SEO to now PPC.

For this week’s installation of SEO odds & ends, I really had to dig–fireworks companies around Austin don’t have a great presence in the search engines. I’m basing these comments on my personal searches for “austin fireworks” in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. A few factors are causing the lack of individual fireworks shops/stands in search engine results, from what I can tell: first, the incredibly high seasonality impact might lead to less investment and/or focus on year-round marketing; also, this industry has competition from fire departments and several large directories that dominate search results, which aren’t quite what I’m looking for when I’m searching for fireworks in Austin.

Eventually I found Mr. W Fireworks, and have a few tips that may increase their search engine presence:

1. Claim your listing in Google Local

   

   • In Google Local Business Center, small businesses (or large ones!) can claim their business name and address in just a matter of minutes. Many small businesses can scoop up hundreds of visits to their site just by listing themselves in the “10-pack.” Mr. W can claim all of their locations that have a mailing address on Google Local Business, which could take awhile but could drive some serious traffic!
   • Submit your company name plus a descriptive keyword–for Mr. W, a good option may be “Mr. W Austin Fireworks Stand.” Tip: Using the keyword within the name of your company will help search engines associate your company with your industry, as well as keep your potential visitors informed as to what your business does.It is also possible to type in your own related “category.”
   • Encourage customers to submit reviews, upload your own videos and images, and list as much information as you can in the overview section. Finally, in this tricky economy, uploading coupons never hurts!
2. Create specific pages for each location served
   • Since Mr. W has locations in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, creating pages on the site that describe the locations they serve could also greatly increase traffic. By using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, you can find approximate local and global search volume for a large selection of terms. I have found that major cities like Austin, Dallas, and Oklahoma City have the largest search volume, so creating those pages would be a great start.
   • For other Local Search Optimization tips, see our video blog post on the topic from one of Apogee’s search experts!
3. Add more content to the Fun Stuff & Safety sections
   • Search engines want to rank sites with lots of content that they hope will be valuable to users. Mr. W’s website has a couple of great pages to include that crawlable content on, including “Fireworks Fun Stuff” and “Fireworks Safety.” Building these pages out over time will help improve the site in the eyes of the search engine algorithms!
   • Request videos of client fireworks displays and embed them on the “Fun Stuff” page. We have talked about the basics of video submission and optimization for video sharing sites, which can be extremely valuable, as well.

I hope this has been another helpful edition of SEO Odds & Edds, and that everyone has a happy Fourth of July!!

Link: What is Location Prominence?

Love: unraveling local search ranking factors.  So you’re a small business (or a large one for that matter), and after doing some reading on SEO, you’ve gone to Google Local Business Center and claimed your business’ listing.  You’ve read about PageRank and the importance of attracting high quality incoming links with your sparkling content.  But what other factors go into the ranking algorithms for local search?  How do you climb up that 10-pack?  How do you improve your “Location Prominence” score–the equivalent of PageRank?  In this post, Mike Blumenthal takes a look at a Google patent to help provide insight into the factors that explicitly help determine this Location Prominence.

Potential Factors in Ranking a Website Highly for Location Specific Searches:

1. Incoming links – not simply directory links, but links from other authoritative sites; sites with a high PageRank or Location Prominence score.
2. Reviews – I’m particularly interested in how Google uses reviews as a factor in local search rankings.  There are the metrics that are already quantified–the actual number of reviews a business has received on a site like Yelp for example and rating itself, 3 stars, 4 stars or 5 stars.  But how do you quantify the content of the review?  How do you turn “good”, “bad”, “efficient”, “okay”, “disgusting”, “spicy” or “pusillanimous” (maybe you rented a guard dog, alright) into a number?  What’s the scale for all negative words?  What’s the most negative word you can give a restaurant?  Does that mean that word passes along a -100 score?
3. Citations – it’s not merely about links, but how many times your business and its accompanying address appear on a website, not as a link.
4. Information about the business – search engines want information.  It helps them develop a rich tapestry of search results.  They’re machines, not humans.  They can’t decipher meaning like you and me.  Providing the search engines with little information about your business is like the difference between a picture from an inexpensive camera versus a professional camera.  If you don’t participate in sites like Yelp, Google Local Business Center, comment on industry blogs, add your business to Best of the Web, then you’re taking a picture of your business with a cheap camera.  Google wants you to use that Nikon D3X!  What’s the business’ annual revenue?  How many employees does the business have?  How long has the business been in existence and how long have they been present in listings across the web?

Link: Page Speed

Love: the need for speed!  Recently, Google announced they were open sourcing a nifty Firefox add-in, integrated with another superb tool called Firebug, called Page Speed.  Page load time is a factor in quality score on the PPC side of life and there have been rumblings about whether or not page load time plays a role or will play a role in natural search rankings for some time now.  Let’s assume it doesn’t play a role in natural search rankings, though.  Does that mean I should compress the images on my site, enable gzip compression or remove unused CSS from my site anyway?  If you happen to have a site that takes a bit longer than usual to load, I’d vote yes.  Users find pages that take too long to load annoying, which translates into users bouncing away.  The thinking behind improving page load, and as a corollary the user experience, is driven by five best practices:

1. Optimizing caching – keeping your application’s data and logic off the network entirely
2. Minimizing round-trip times – reducing the number of serial request-response cycles
3. Minimizing request size – reducing upload size
4. Minimizing payload size – reducing the size of responses, downloads and cached pages
5. Optimizing browser rendering – improving the browser’s layout of a page

Aside: “…reducing…cached pages.”  Hmm, interesting. Nofollow links to your About Us page, AND robots.txt them out?

Link: Web Data Quality: A 6 Step Process to Evolve Your Mental Model

Love: data, but don’t allow imperfect data to cause you to freeze and not act.  One of my favorite lines from this post says there is no limit to the amount of data to you can collect and store on the Internet, and it’s headache-inducingly correct.  I’ve mentioned in previous posts the importance of collecting data, analyzing data and then providing an interpretation of that data for insight into what action should be taken, and I of course still feel that way, but I’m not a Quant.  There’s a point where granular becomes so microscopic that the difference in dataset A and dataset B will not cause your client to change his or her decision. Therefore, you need to accept imperfection and act.  I know we’re big into models and science and equations, but so was Wall Street, and we saw what happened there.  Certainly collect your data, but don’t allow it to bog you down into indecision, and don’t allow incomplete data to bolster that indecision.  After all, it’s all incomplete (esoteric alert!).

“How do you measure the effectiveness of your magazine ad? Now compare that to the data you have from DoubleClick. How about measuring the ability of your TV ad to reach the right audience? Compare that with measuring reach through Paid Search (or Affiliate Marketing, or …). Do you think you get more useful data from Neilsen’s TV panel of between 15k – 30k US residents to represent the diversity of TV content consumption of 200 million American television viewers?”

Link: 9 Crucial UI Features of Social Media and Networking Sites

Love: social media for something other than retweeting, posting pictures or helping you acquire links.  Social media websites work because they facilitate communication and sharing amongst users (and they allow us to talk about ourselves, of course).  The good ones also work on a different level–user interface.  Thinking about your website in this way, and incorporating these features, can help drastically improve your conversion rate.  Remember, it’s all about the user, not you!

Link: Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive

Love: scientifically proven ways to do anything.  Who doesn’t want to be persuasive?  You’re a business, right?  You’re trying to tell your story in order to persuade the potential client to help you write the next chapter, right?  A few favorites from the post:

• Too many options necessitate selection, and hence frustration…
• How restaurant mints are a personalized affair
• Asking people to substantiate their decision will lead to higher commitment

(Thanks to @ifss who tweeted this post)

It’s late Tuesday which means it’s time for Link Love Monday. Hopefully you had a solid, and if you were lucky, relaxing weekend. For the rest of us who entertained guests over the Memorial Day holiday, here’s to drinking lots of water and going to bed at 7:30 tonight! Today’s set of links lean toward the local side of search, but the general principles involved in optimizing for local can certainly be transfered to natural search. Let the link love flow:
 

Link: GetListed.org

Love: An aggregator that helps simplify the process of optimzing your local search presence. Last month Google kept it weird and got a lot more local by providing the sexy local 10-pack for a broader range of non-geo targeted keywords ([austin tacos] versus simply [tacos], for example).  If you’re a small business, it’s even more important for you to claim your listings in Google, Yahoo! and MSN, as well as optimize your site for maximal local search exposure. GetListed.org, which has been around for awhile now,  provides a hub for you to start this process. Simply enter the name of your business, enter the zip code and you’ll be provided with an overview of your local presence — have you claimed your listing? Do you have reviews, citations, pictures or videos in your local listing?

Aside: speaking of reviews, looking for content ideas for your website?  Check out your reviews on sites like Yelp.com.  Users might tell you exactly the type of information you need to add to your site.
 

Link: Tracking Local Search Traffic with Analytics

Love: Tracking your presence — it’s vital. Okay, so you’ve hopped into GetListed.org, claimed your listings, updated your website accordingly, notice you’ve improved your lot in the local 10-pack and…now what? How do you know how well your listing in the local 10-pack is working? How much traffic is it driving to your site? You can’t manage what you don’t measure (as Bill Leake, our fearless leader here at Apogee, would say). Check out this excellent post on how to track both local traffic from the 10-pack found in the SERPs as well as traffic originating specifically from http://maps.google.com.
 

Link: How a Search Engine Might Determine Whether a Search Involves a Geographical Intent

Love: How local search might work, so that you can turn your inquisitive how’s into actionable how-to’s. This post covers an important part of local search, and search in general — intention. What does a searcher actually mean when he or she types in a keyword and how might you go about calculating meaning/intention. The post uses an article by an University of Massachussetts research and two articles from Yahoo! Labs as the basis for the discusion.

“If you have a web site that offers goods or services or information tied to a particular location, the processes described in this paper are some that may help searchers stand a better chance of finding your site online the next time that they search for ‘attorney’s office,’ or ‘camping near shenandoah park,’ or ‘Macy’s Parade Hotel,’or use some other query that may involve a geographical intent without including an actual location.”
 

Link: Google Analytics Mega-Post: 23 Google Analytics Tips and Tweaks

Love: Customizing Google Analytics, tracking your presence (again) and mega-posts, of course. A great post covering 23 ways you can customize Google Analytics in order to tease out more of the information you need to create a full tapestry of your online presence. Track: full referring URLs, Universal Search traffic, downloads (PDFs, WMV, etc.) and more.
 

Link: Linked Date is Blooming: Why You Should Care

Love: Data, data and more data. The embedded video is a superb introduction to linked data and why should you care — definitely take the 15 minutes to watch it.

“Linked Data allows you to discover, connect to, describe, and re-use all kinds of data. It is to data what the World Wide Web was to documents back in the 90’s.”
 

Link: 14 Key Requirements for a Search Friendly CMS

Love: A search friendly CMS. Seriously. It will save you heartache, pain, sleepless nights and money on Pepto Bismol. This is a question that’s asked fairly often by clients, particularly when they’re thinking about or are in the process of changing their CMS. It’s okay to be a control freak when it comes to your CMS — just control it.
 

BONUS Link Love Laughter Section: Charlie Rose on the future of the Internet by Samuel Beckett.

I live in Austin.  Traffic is bad.  No, it’s not NYC bad or LA bad, but it’s still relatively bad.  Interstate 35 is probably my least favorite highway of all time – and I-40 between Little Rock, AR and Memphis, TN isn’t exactly the yellow brick road.  We certainly need to do something about public transportation a) because this area’s population will continue to explode in the coming years and b) Google Maps’ latest development might actually come to Austin.

Today, Google announced that Google Maps now features a Transit Layer that shows users all of the public transportation routes throughout their city.  The feature does not provide users with arrival and depature times,  but instead allows users to “familiarize [themselves] with the public transport network and find out which lines to use and where to change.”

At present, there is a fairly small number of cities where the Transit Layer will appear on Google Maps – sorry New York City, you’re sitting next to Austin on the bus.  However, if you live in Seattle all you have to do is enter your address, highlight the “More” tab and select “Transit” and the public transit lines will appear on your map.

This new addition is great for individuals new to a city, but more importantly, it’s a great tool for those people who are on the go and need to find out which lines to use from their phone.  Mobile local search looks to be in for some awesome developments during 2009.

So here we are, the infamous “prediction post”…we knew you couldn’t resist, so neither could we. Last year brought so many important changes to the search engine marketing industry, and even more substantial refinements await in 2009 as search engines continue to tweak their algorithms and work to deliver the results that users are searching for.

We surveyed our experts here at Apogee Search and have compiled a list of their top predictions for search engine marketing in 2009. They are as follows.

1. Search within a site will become more important for Google.
Search within a site is a function that allows users to search the specific pages of a website from the Google search results page. This means that Google will determine which pages are important within a site, and users will be sent to those pages.

“Google will be really aggressive with search within a site in 2009. They will be able to keep users on the Google search results page longer since users will refine their searches in Google before clicking through to a web page,” said Apogee Search CEO Bill Leake.

Every page in a site should be a conversion page in 2009 because site designers will not be in control of user navigation, Google will be.

2. SEO metrics will continue to shift toward traffic and conversions, away from rankings.
Natural search rankings will be less important in 2009. With the recession in full swing, executives will want to see improvements in the bottom-line, and rankings by themselves do not pay the bills. The search engine marketing industry will become smarter about what they track and what numbers they care about. Search professionals will need to focus more on tracking where traffic is coming from and the keywords users are searching for. As search engines adapt their user interfaces to the changing industry, traditional rankings will not drive traffic as they used to, and the traditional rankings report still used by the majority of the search engine optimization industry will become increasingly discredited.

3. Universal Search will become more relevant.
In mid-2008, Google implemented Universal Search, a version of their search algorithm that incorporates videos, maps, news and other media in addition to traditional text among search results. Currently only certain keywords trigger Universal Search, so there are still some searches that display only traditional text search results.

“We will see Universal Search more in 2009. Google will get better at predicting which Universal Search options will be relevant to specific keywords,” said Brian Combs, Apogee Search’s Senior Vice President and Chief Futurist.

4. This is finally the year for mobile.
After years of expectations, mobile Internet usage will actually grow rapidly in 2009, reaching critical mass. According to a recent study by Mobile Market View, the number of mobile users who access the Internet from their mobile devices increased 20% in 2008 from 2007. The cost of data plans from mobile service providers is dropping, and mobile web-browsing software is improving by leaps and bounds, resulting in a steadily increasing usage rate for mobile search.

This means that websites will need to be more mobile-friendly. Designers should use XML and XHTML when designing sites and consider the limitations of cell phones.

Search marketers should consider the information mobile users will be searching for. Typically, it is information that is needed immediately. Searchers will not be looking for information for research papers from their phones; instead they will look for retailers, restaurants and other local businesses. Consider the information that users want when developing keyword lists.

5. Local search will become more prevalent.
Local search has gained prominence due to its ability to make search results more relevant. For example, if a user enters a city name in their search, they probably want results within that city. Local search is a great way for Google to make search results more inclusive in these situations. Local search will continue to gain popularity as mobile search continues to grow at a rapid pace. With such rapid growth in mobile search, it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to make sure consumers are able to easily locate their brick and mortar locations when they are on-the-go and ready to make a purchase.

Businesses of all sizes can claim their listing in the Google Local Business Center.

6. Businesses will repurpose, redistribute and integrate through social media.
Social media outlets allow businesses to reach and interact with more consumers for less money. Businesses are expected to take a more integrated approach to social marketing in 2009 to save money as the economy continues to struggle. Low-cost social marketing will become the tool to use especially as marketers realize the importance of repurposing offline messages and redistributing them through social networks (blogs, video sharing, etc.) to increase overall reach and natural search authority. By integrating social media into promotional strategies, businesses will reap the benefits of social marketing as both brand-building and link-building devices.

7. Google search will become more personalized.
Google will utilize more extensive tracking software to monitor user behavior on the web. Google will use this data to bias search results. For example, if a user frequently visits singles’ sites and then searches for vacation spots, Google might display vacation spots for singles. While this might make search results more relevant, there is also the risk that Google will misinterpret user behavior and incorrectly bias results.

Google also recently rolled-out wiki-style user modification options to their search results page. Currently, only logged-in Google account holders can modify their search results by changing the order of the displayed pages. Users can rearrange their results and save public comments about the pages in their search results.

Google might use this data as a variable in their algorithm, but they will have to be careful not to skew the results.

“Google has made their mark in the search industry by being easy to understand by all searchers; if they skew heavily towards tech-savvy users, those results will likely confuse the casual searcher,” stated Nadia King, Manager of Natural Search Services.

8. Display ads will remain the only format, besides search, to maintain double-digit share in online advertising spending.
The current economic state has advertisers tightening their budgets, but with the expected economic upturn later this year, marketers will begin to reinvest in advertising and become smarter about where their dollars are being spent. Smart advertisers know that online marketing is one of the most effective and measurable ways to really see the impact of your efforts, and recent studies have shown that display ads are contributing more and more to improve that impact.

Many studies have been conducted within the past year to prove that display ads and search are directly correlated. Display ads might not have the highest click-through rates but they definitely aid in improving brand awareness. Use of display ads can result in significant improvement in visitation to the advertiser’s website, search queries using the advertiser’s branded terms, online sales, and offline sales, as AVC.com reports.

“Search clickers exposed to display advertising were 22% more likely to produce a sale than those who were not exposed,” according to a September 2008 study of Microsoft’s Engagement Mapping system by Atlas Solutions. According to David Hallerman, Senior Analyst at eMarketer, “there is a connection between display and search ads…often it’s not the search ad alone that gets consumers to act, but the context of all the marketing that preceded it.”

Now that you know what to expect for 2009, take a moment to recap some memorable search and online marketing happenings with this collection of 2008 year-in-review lists, articles and blog posts developed by Small Business Search Marketing. You can also check out Apogee’s 2008 prediction post, as well as our recap of 2008 based on that post.

The year is almost done. I’ve noticed quite a number of “Best of 2008″ posts floating around the search marketing industry, along with the proverbial prediction posts: what does 2009 hold for SEM? The SEO department here at Apogee batted this question back and forth during one of our team meetings to formulate a list of answers. I’m not going to delve into the entire list right now, but instead, talk a bit about one item in particular from that list: the personalization of search and rankings.

Let’s first start with a definition of personalized search. I asked a few friends not barricaded within the ivory tower of search engine marketing if they noticed they could manipulate search results on Google when logged into one of their Google accounts, or if they noticed the “Customized based on recent search activity” text at the top right corner of their search results. The consensus answer? “No.” So, as long as there is an unaware class, I am of it. Basically, personalized search is providing search results to users based on search history, search query intent and user location, and in Google’s case, SearchWiki activity, among other signals.

Of course, increased personalized search on its own isn’t much of a bold prediction. Rather, predicting the degree to which it will infiltrate search marketing, and search engine rankings in particular, is how you grab headlines. Well, I’m not here to join the “Rankings R Dead” team or the “Personalization Won’t Matter Much” team – I know, the grey area is boring and oh so non-polarizing, but I’m not looking for true believers here. Looks like I’m not grasping at headlines.

So how will personalized search affect rankings and how will we utilize them in SEO?

Personalized search will have the most impact on those queries whose relevancy is disparately dependent on location – restaurants and the like – and queries that are not location specific will be affected minimally, but could be affected by search history.

It’s logical that users receive different search results for a query such as “thai restaurants” if one lives in Ridgecrest, CA and another lives in Bremerton, WA. Location should be one of the primary signals in determining personalized results for these queries. However, it’s illogical that users receive completely different search results for queries such as “linguistics” based on location, but logical that search history slightly effect those rankings.

If search history reveals the person searching for “linguistics” frequents websites with videos, perhaps tweaking the algorithms so that websites with videos receive a bit of a boost makes sense. Nonetheless, the overriding desire here is for relevancy. Personalization does not occur in a vacuum where other users do not exist. Looking to the collective, through linking patterns, helps provide greater relevancy than merely one user’s search patterns.

Also, I don’t think the changes will be drastic for those queries where search history can play a role in determining rankings, because Yahoo! is going to anonymize user data after 90 days, and I think Google and Microsoft will not only set a similar limit, but will be forced to do so eventually. If this plays out as predicted, search results will only be personalized to a certain extent.

Finally, how will smart SEOs utilize rankings as a metric for success?

The first example, location dependent queries, would generally fall into the local search realm. I don’t foresee a major change in this department except that local businesses will be required to seek out SEO services from their hometown agency. Rankings are not dead. They are alive, well, breathing, eating, sleeping and working for you.

For those queries potentially affected by search history, I don’t think the changes will be drastic. It seems illogical to personalize search results for the sake of personalization while detracting from relevancy. Wikipedia works so well because it looks to the collective – groups are much wiser than individuals on their own.

Will personalization force smart SEOs to adapt?

Of course. Will it potentially make tracking certain rankings harder? Yes, but harder does not mean impossible. However, proclaiming rankings dead is akin to saying search engines are dead. Search is a cornerstone of the Internet. So long as people need to find information about things they do not know, rankings will matter. So long as the search results are organized (ranked), rankings will matter because they bring exposure, traffic, leads, sales and revenue. Rankings should have always been looked at as a means to these ends.

‘Tis the season for shopping, right? Well, on this lazy weekend, I was hoping to go to one of those cute little holiday bazaars with local and handmade treasures. I actually went to one last year and wanted to check the hours and entrance fee. So, like the good little search marketer that I am, I started by opening up my laptop to find the information I needed.

The bazaar I’ve been to before has been advertised around town a bit – something like Keep Austin Bazaar (if you aren’t familiar with Austin, you may not be aware of the play on the local phrase Keep Austin Weird). I took a stab at the name and came up empty handed – the first results page included a musical instruments retailer and a Paid Search ad from Amazon. So, dead end.

Next try – sometimes I try to throw in the year of an event, figuring that it might be called the 2008 Austin Bazaar or even the 2008 Austin Holiday Bazaar. No luck. I remember that the spelling might be the other version of the word, so I try again:

Click here to view image larger

After clicking on the first result, I realize I’m not at the actual event’s website, I’m at a listing for the event on the Austin section of When.com. I finally locate the link to the official website for the event — BAM! It all becomes clear…

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A site almost entirely coded in Flash. Am I surprised? Not really. I mean, it’s a cute site. The various event attractions are skating across the sky (“jewelry,” and “art,” etc.) and there are snowflakes (a rarity in Austin) sprinkling down the screen. The navigation string of holiday ornaments is pretty easy for site visitors to understand. Note: If I had searched simply “Austin Bizarre” I would have found the site immediately – however, I’m assuming the event organizers would like to rank for as many related terms as possible.

The search engines have a limited chance of actually serving this Flash site up for searchers, even searchers like me who know exactly what they’re looking for and (at least somewhat) how to perform a search.

And now for my good deed during this holiday season…

How could the Keep Austin Bizarre Holiday Bazaar have improved their website for the search engines? Here are 4 (somewhat) easy tips to implement for next year:

1. Limit the Flash content on the site

• Earlier this year, Google made major improvements in Flash indexing on websites; however, this is still not an optimal coding language for search engines to index. In particular, links and content should not be coded in Flash. For images or widgets, Flash works very well though.
• With the current Flash coding, there is no way the list of musicians and craftsmen could be returned for a search.

Solution: Don’t put the navigation bar in Flash, or provide an additional navigation bar (coded in HTML, which is search friendly) in the footer of each page.

2. Write a descriptive title tag

• Currently, the title tag reads: “KeepAustinBizarre.” The title tag is a lightning rod for the search engines – what better way to determine what a site is about than the title of the first page? Including descriptive text here will go a long way in your search engine optimization efforts.
• Do:
  • include the date of the event
  • include the address, and other important information
  • limit the title tag to 60 characters, including spaces
• Examples:
  • Keep Austin Bizarre Holiday Bazaar – December 12 – 23, 2008
  • 2nd Annual Keep Austin Bizarre – 2008 Holiday Bazaar
  • 2008 Keep Austin Bizarre – Palmer Events Center, Local Crafts

3. Submit to Google Local

• By submitting to Google Local Business Center, this event’s Google listing could include a highlighted result and link in addition to a map pointer directly on the event’s location.
• Cory Barbot gave some guidance about Google Local submissions a few weeks ago for our blog, so be sure to check that out to learn more about local search – Local SEO Tips.

4. Launch a Paid Search Campaign

• Vivian Chang was recently interviewed on event driven paid search campaigns for the Apogee Search YouTube channel, you can watch the video here: Promoting Events with Paid Search Campaigns.

A few tweaks and some prior planning for next year (maybe beginning around mid-2009) would make this site much more search engine friendly. And hey, who doesn’t want more traffic?

At the beginning of the year, this post on the Apogee Search Marketing Blog made some predictions about search marketing in 2008. Before we try to make any predictions about 2009, let’s take a minute to review 2008’s search predictions compared to what actually occurred over the last 12 months.

Apogee’s 2008 search predictions were as follows:

1. Management tools become the cost of having a seat at the paid search table, rather than a competitive advantage. PPC management tools were certainly abundant in 2008. And, yes, they were almost necessary to a campaign’s success. Whether these tools were internal or external, focused on automated bid management, analyzing data or testing campaign variables, management tools freed up paid search managers’ time so they could focus on new opportunities, expansion and overall strategy.
2. Business/marketing acumen becomes more important to paid search management than technical prowess. While tools are great, tools just do what we tell them to do. Ultimately paid search managers have to set appropriate goals for marketers and outline the necessary steps to reach those goals. This year ad copy and landing page testing have gained popularity as marketers focus on increasing conversion rates. With new tools such as Google Website Optimizer (GWO), these tests are becoming easier to implement.
3. Search engines continue to provide better bid management functionality. Most tools vendors don’t react. Search engines have made many improvements in an effort to provide better bid management functionality in 2008, but despite all of the changes made this year, there is still a long way to go in providing reliable bid management functionality.
   • Google announced a new quality score method this year that determines CPC in “real-time,” as opposed to its tried and true static quality scores. It also allows for marketers to see first page bids rather than minimum bids.
   • AdWords Editor now allows users to download performance statistics so that analysis and adjustments can easily be made in the same interface. In addition, the newest 7.0 version, allows users to see quality scores and first page bid estimates for keywords.
   • Yahoo! now allows marketers to view average rankings when in the bid editing page.
   • MSN Live Search released a desktop beta tool that is essentially an AdWords Editor for Microsoft.

   Bid management tools are also still a bit behind the curve. While their automation saves paid search managers time by adjusting bids, they are slow to react to changes made by search engines. Adjusting bids manually within the search engine’s interface is often more complicated than just using the free tools offered by search engines. As for full blown campaign management, we’re still not seeing many tools with the ability to handle that functionality yet.

4. Google extends its lead in the paid search market, either a little or a lot, depending upon how you measure the industry. Without a doubt, Google continues to be the leader in the paid search realm. ComScore recently released that in October 2008 Google Sites held 63.1% of all searches, as compared to 58.5% in October of 2007. Google’s revenue also increased 31% from third quarter 2007 to third quarter 2008, raking in $5.54 billion in Q3 2008.As for service offerings, Google rolled out tool after tool after tool aimed at helping paid search marketers in 2008. All of these tools successfully assist marketers in optimizing and expanding their paid search campaigns, allowing for Google to maintain and grow its steady cash flow.
5. Local search continues to grow, but still has a difficult time providing substantive traffic in most markets. This year businesses flocked to Google Local Business Center. It has become “the” thing to do. As Universal Search rolled out throughout the year, local search optimization became even more visible and critical. In most industries and major cities, a business with a service that is location-specific and not on Google Local, will basically be behind by the end of this year.Furthermore, Google’s Local Business Ads (LBAs), a version of paid ads that appear mostly on Google Maps, contributed heavily to local search’s growth in 2008.
6. Google rolls Click-To-Call in with its local search service, and still no one cares. Not much word about Click-to-Call this year; still no one cares. What has gained recognition in 2008 is phone call tracking for paid search campaigns. Companies such as ClickPath, provide the ability to track calls to the keyword level.
7. Google Pay Per Action gains traction with B2C advertisers, struggles with B2B advertisers. Google launched Pay Per Action beta globally in June 2007, but phased it out in 2008, citing the DoubleClick/Performics acquisition as the reasoning.
8. Google Product Search (previously Froogle) celebrates its sixth birthday, remains in beta. Yes, Google Product Search is still in Beta. During 2008, this product caught up with other comparison shopping engines by showing groups of similar products when a search is performed. This change caught some bloggers’ eyes when it first rolled out, but ironically, later in the year Google Product Search made it on the list of search engines you’ve never heard of. An option that many companies have not yet tapped into is submitting services just as you would submit products.
9. Google continues to rail against paid links. The paid linking industry adjusts and continues to provide SEO benefit to its clients. SocialSpark was launched by PayPerPost in mid-2008, and the head of Google’s webspam team Matt Cutts says he actually likes IZEA’s new service. SocialSpark provides advertisers an opportunity to pay bloggers for a review but requires a nofollow link to the advertiser.Another paid link vendor, Text Link Ads (TLA) launched InLinks publicly in November. Throughout 2008, Google has commented and posted extensively that paid links are in violation of the FTC’s Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. SEO bloggers have been debating about the impact of these changes as recently as the last few weeks.For whatever reason, Yahoo! and MSN haven’t been quite as vocal against paid linking in 2008. Yahoo! isn’t worried about the payment as much as the likelihood that a paid link usually doesn’t give as much value as a non-paid link.
10. SEO becomes more metrics driven as companies learn to measure their SEO performance. Absolutely. Tracking SEO leads and sales provides ROI that is critical to include in a company’s overall marketing expenditure analysis. The tricky part here is if the company knows what the value of a lead is to them or if they can track natural search visitors all the way through to a sale. During 2008, fewer companies were concerned about rankings as they were forced to look more at the bottom line.
11. Rumors swirl about an imminent merger between Yahoo! and Microsoft triggering a deluge of blog posts and nothing else. Yes, definitely. Talks between Yahoo! and Microsoft surfaced again early in the year but have fizzled quickly. Mid-2008 Google stole Yahoo! from Microsoft and became the attention of all, but that too died out by the end of the year. Although Google and Yahoo! gave it a shot with a trial period during the spring, antitrust scrutiny and regulatory concerns ultimately caused Google to call it quits with Yahoo.
12. The line between Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing blurs further, except among those that actually know how to perform SEO and/or SMM. SEO and SMM definitely continue to be blurred in some circles (i.e. many marketers think creating a Facebook page will greatly help their search engine efforts). While creation of the company’s profile in these outlets is a fairly straightforward process, actually promoting them becomes much trickier and requires a completely different set of goals and strategies. Tracking offline inquiries becomes an important consideration but is not yet mastered in most campaigns.

MapQuest recently added a Twitter feed to their local start pages that allows users to follow tweets from individuals living in their respective cities. All users have to do is select the city they’d like to follow, opt into the feed and voila! You can follow the tweets of people located in Austin, Portland, Boston, or any other city your inquisitive mind desires.  

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This development certainly adds to the already social aspect of the local start pages – you’ll notice the Local Reviews section of the page is “powered” by Yelp – and can provide small business owners with another opportunity to engage potential customers. Taken with the big picture in mind, the incorporation of Twitter into MapQuest Local follows the pattern of personalization across all Internet channels, from Google SearchWiki, the socialization of single sign-in protocols (Google Friend Connect, Facebook Connect) and personalized search results.  

Moving back to a more granular picture, the Twitter feed is not perfect.  The feed is not monitored or filtered, and as such, the feed picks up tweets originating from your city of choice regardless of the topic. Don’t be surprised to see an “F-bomb” appear in the feed — kids, cover your eyes! So, in terms of the feed providing small businesses with Tweeps (that’s Twitter for “peeps”) tweeting about your two-step lessons for twins, you’re out of luck. If you participate on Twitter as your business, you can potentially appear in the feed by posting consistently throughout the day – I posted a test tweet and it was picked up immediately by MapQuest’s Twitter feed.  

Additionally, the feed alerts you to active members of a burgeoning online community, and in this case an online community located in your city.  If you take only one thing away from this development, it should be to participate in these nodes of social media. Go where your customers socialize on the Internet, it’s all about the user!