~~~High Rankings Advisor – Issue No. 248~~~
Your Host: Jill Whalen [jill@highrankings.com]
________________________________________________________
~~~IN TODAY'S ADVISOR~~~
*Search Engine Marketing:
----> When Google Fails, It's SearchWiki to the Rescue!
*This Week's Sponsors:
----> Website Marketing Workshops April 2–3, 2009
----> 2009 SEO Training Classes April and May Openings
*Stuff You Might Like:
----> MarketMotive Live Certification Event
----> SEMPO In-House Search Marketing Survey
*Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week:
----> New Forum Section – Best Posts and Articles
*Advisor Wrap-up:
----> Free Pass to SMX West
________________________________________________________
~~~Introductory Comments~~~
Hey everyone!
Since many enjoyed my anecdotal story about the kids who were crying on the plane and how it related to people ignoring the cries of their website (here if you missed it: http://m1e.net/c?86763832-U/UzdFujG4P0o%403914857-cpq9JGWCn.GO2 ), I thought I'd tell you another story of what happened while planning that holiday trip last month. Thankfully, there was no crying involved if you don't count my screaming tweets of frustration ( http://m1e.net/c?86763832-GpzsiH0jNOb/c%403914858-0l4AjxSyKLxIw ) at what I was finding in the search results when attempting to rent a car online. I was so glad that Google's SearchWiki and its personalization came to the rescue so that in the future I will be able to find exactly the site I was looking for.
You'll also want to check out the free pass opportunity to SMX West in February, as well as an invitation to a cool online event that MarketMotive is doing with their certification class.
Enjoy! – Jill
_________________High Rankings______________________
Website Marketing Workshops April 2–3, 2009
__________________________________________________
4 Half-day Workshops to Choose From!
Already know the SEO basics?
In these half-day in-depth website marketing workshops you will learn:
* Keywords: How to research them and use them within your website
* Copywriting: For your target audience and the search engines
* Social media: How to get the word out and gain traffic and links for your
website
* Web analytics: How to measure the success of your web marketing campaigns.
Register for just one workshop, an entire day, or all 4!
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-xLavgw0fOq6l.%403914859-JX2einfBCJ4ng
__________________________________________________
~~~Search Engine Marketing Issues~~~
++When Google Fails, It's SearchWiki to the Rescue!++
It was a few weeks before our annual trip to Pompano, FL to visit my grandmother and get away from the nasty New England weather. We had our plane tickets and hotel reserved, but still needed a rental car. I'd been reserving cars for years through a rental car aggregator website that I found many years ago when searching online for rental cars in Ft. Lauderdale. It was one of those websites that show you the best prices from the various companies in the area. Years ago it always showed up in a search for "rental cars Ft. Lauderdale" or similar searches, so I never bothered to remember their name.
This year, however, I typed the keyword phrase "rental car ft. lauderdale airport" at Google and didn't see the site I was looking for on the first or second page of results. Too lazy to sift through my old emails to find the company name, I noticed the number-one result was an Expedia page for rental cars in Ft. Lauderdale. "Okay," I thought, "Expedia does a good job with finding decent flights, so this should work fine for rental cars as well," and clicked through.
What I was met with was paragraphs and paragraphs of prose on why renting a car in Ft. Lauderdale was a good idea. In other words, pretty much a doorway page created by some sort of SEO-type. And thus began my Twitter rants:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-i56c77YENmaZw%403914860-/.5.j6rjaHHNQ
Everyone knows that I am a fan of making sure that people know they're at the right place on your website when they get there by having some descriptive copy, but this was just silly. It's not that the copy was overly keyword stuffed, it just wasn't necessary. If I'm searching for a rental car in Ft. Lauderdale, I'm already sold on the fact that I need a rental car. And I know I need it in Ft. Lauderdale. And yes, I also know that Ft. Lauderdale is a really cool place to visit (that's why I'm going there!).
At any rate, I decide to overlook the zealous SEO efforts (after all, they were #1 for the search query, so they must have been givin' ole Googly what she wanted), and I looked for the form to choose my car. There was nothing in the first screenful that allowed this. But there was a box in the sidebar with links to all the other locations from which I could order a rental car! Of course, this wasn't very helpful since I had already said at Google that I wanted one from Ft. Lauderdale – especially since I was on the Ft. Lauderdale landing page.
So I scrolled all the way down past the SEO text to look for the form. Ahh...there it was, way down at the bottom of the page. Thus, my second ranting tweet:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-8XhDZyunv82nE%403914861-h/yGb6m1zY6AM
Okay, so now I had found the form, but guess what? It wasn't pre-filled in with Ft. Lauderdale as the pickup location! This led to my third Twitter rant...
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-0nfzIF5F7MYv.%403914862-erAXMVzXqNdF%2e
...and the straw that broke the camel's back. I ranted once more to any Twitter followers who were still listening, and left Expedia in a huff:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-ktrCei3NWlazY%403914863-PfyGIapLE1jqc
I then went back to my original Google results, gave a quick scan and saw Thrifty there. I knew we had gotten good prices from them before, so I gave them a shot. So far, so good – their form was pre-filled out with Ft. Lauderdale Airport as my pickup location as it should have been – yay! Unfortunately, they were all sold out for the days of our trip. I scanned the search results again and saw Alamo, which we had also used in the past. Their resulting page was their home page, which I thought was weird. That also meant that their form was not pre-filled out with the location. I filled it in anyway, but their prices looked awfully high to me and I was pretty sure I could do better if I could just find an easy place to compare prices, like I was originally looking for.
I clicked through multiple pages of Google search results looking for the familiar website that I used to use, but couldn't seem to find it and still didn't remember the name (and was still was too lazy to look through old emails). I decided to change my search query a little bit and see if I could find it that way. Bingo! I finally found it, although it was pretty buried. When I clicked through, it was the perfect page. Not only did it have a pre-filled-out form and not a lot of useless keyword-stuffed prose, it even had a sample pricing chart for the most popular car rental agencies. Within 2 minutes of finding that page, I had my car reserved at a great price from Payless.
Figuring that I might be in the same boat next year, I wanted to ensure that I could easily find the website again, and remembered Google's newish SearchWiki function that lets you move websites up and down in the search results. While you only move them up in your own personal results (and must be logged in to your Google account to enable this), it occurred to me that this was exactly what SearchWiki was designed for.
I had previously thought about playing with SearchWiki a bit to see what it was all about for SEO purposes. The thing is, I don't particularly trust Google and was afraid that hundreds or even thousands of SEOs were probably already out there trying to scam the SearchWiki results by moving their clients' websites to the top of the list. I had no interest in flagging our sites as having been SEO'd. Why provide Google with that sort of signal?
And yet, I had been curious about SearchWiki and how "regular people" might use it. Here was the perfect opportunity to try SearchWiki and use it to personalize my own results. And so I did. I moved my favorite rental car aggregator page to the top of the search results page (SERP), and also wrote a nice comment on why I had done so, being sure to mention that I wasn't affiliated with the company, just a happy long-time customer.
Checking the Google SERP with personalization completely off, as well as with SearchWiki off (by using a Chrome Browser Incognito window: http://m1e.net/c?86763832-2rB70c3FAHOMI%403914864-CCB.mrESOlp66 ) shows Expedia is still #1 and my favorite website is still nowhere to be found. In fact, they seemed even harder to find, which worries me a little. I certainly hope that my moving them up didn't actually hurt them – but that's probably just my tinfoil hat talking!
When searching while logged in with my personalization on, my favorite website does show up first, complete with a little green SearchWiki arrow next to it showing that I moved it there. My comment also shows up as part of its description. As long as Google doesn't scrap SearchWiki by the time I'm looking to reserve a car next year, I should be able to easily find my favorite site right at the top of the results.
How about you? Have you tried SearchWiki in this way? I just read that they've added even more personalized functionality this week called "Google Preferred Sites." You can read more about that at Google:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-3.aKvj/fhTYP2%403914865-PKVDwS0bYy8QM
Jill
Feel free to comment on this article or let me know how you're using Google's SearchWiki:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-/R7GP6QX2yQbs%403914866-I5F586oOMh9Mg
(P.S. If anyone would like to republish the above article, please email me
your request and where it will reside, and I'll send you a short bio you can
use with it for your site.)
~~~Stuff You Might Like~~~
++MarketMotive Live Certification Event++
You are invited to join MarketMotive live as their Internet Marketing Master Certification finalists undergo their final project – a live panel review gauntlet – which reads like a wild fusion between American Idol, a PhD dissertation defense, and a lightning-round news roundtable show.
Want your site or campaign assessed by the next generation of Internet marketing consultants? Let them know when you register for free to attend this special event:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-IgtMvj8.P51I6%403914867-tVtSZ2fKpTOyo
______________High Rankings SEO Training___________________
Classes Are Like In-person SEO Consulting at a Fraction of the Price!
_______________________________________________________
1-day SEO Training Class for beginners to intermediate learners.
You will learn what SEO is and isn't, as well as what you need to do to
bring in more search engine visitors who are seeking out exactly what you
offer.
Class is limited to 6 students and we will work on YOUR specific website
issues.
March is sold out, but there are a few openings for April and May classes:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-VI4MUwWCZ6rqY%403914868-/P6/Vcrc6/k2U
_______________________________________________________
++SEMPO In-House Search Marketing Survey++
Are you an in-house search marketer? If so, please take a few minutes to fill out SEMPO's Second Annual In-House Salary Survey:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-eCUHpugy4eFOY%403914869-zz1r2VwP.V6f6
This important survey that will help us all understand the state of compensation for SEM professionals around the world. Last year's survey allowed an unprecedented inside look at in-house marketers' salaries, job roles and responsibilities, verticals and segments, compensation extras and perks, budgets and more.
Given the current economy and job market, this year's survey will provide information that has never been more valuable or timely.
~~~Advanced SEO Forum Thread of the Week~~~
++New Forum Section – Best Posts and Articles++
Rather than pointing you to any specific forum thread, I want to let you know about our new section of the High Rankings Forum called the "Best Posts and Articles of the Week." Basically it's a forum where our moderators and trusted members can post the great articles or blog posts that they have come across in their online travels.
My hope with this new forum is to showcase only really good articles so that if you don't have the time to weed through all the junk out there you can just visit this forum and know it will be high-quality stuff.
So far we've posted articles about Google Analytics plug-ins, XML sitemaps, business mistakes, conversion metrics, SEO copywriting and more.
Check out the new forum section:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-szRnF5zd7EasY%403914870-KoXYtsD4gn2Bg
~~~Advisor Wrap-up~~~
That's all for today!
So who wants a free pass to SMX West Feb. 10–12 in Santa Clara, CA? I'll be speaking on the SEO content writing bootcamp session, as well as the "Ask the SEOs" panel. One lucky HRA subscriber has a shot at the pass by emailing me at:
smxwest09@highrankings.com
and letting me know why you'd like to go to the conference and what you hope to get out of it.
Please remember that you will still have to pay for your own travel and lodging. If you want to attend the conference but don't receive the free pass, you can still save $75 by using our discount code: smx75hra.
Learn more or register for SMX West:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-E7HZ/WFJ8QXvI%403914871-Z0pCo8jsz8ol%2e
On the personal front, after SMX West I'm heading to Las Vegas for the long weekend and will meet up with my long-lost "Hawaiian" daughter, Jamie. Should be fun!
From Vegas I fly straight to London for the SES show, where I've been invited to be on the prestigious Orion panel, which features thought leaders in the search marketing industry to discuss where SEO is heading. You can learn more about that here:
http://m1e.net/c?86763832-NUywSutG1wLeQ%403914872-5JRUwJbBmFuFE
I'm attempting to convince my husband and son to meet me in London for some sightseeing, but it's really tough to get Tim (the son) to commit. He has school vacation that week so it would work out perfectly. I'm still holding out hope that they'll join me.
Catch you in two weeks! – Jill
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