I have just read a very well thought through article about how to measure SEO performance. It’s written with traditional SEO done to large sites by SEO specialists but the metrics it speaks about are also relevant for the kind of large/small business SEO that we specialize in. To condense the article to it’s essentials it asks the following questions:

· Are your pages indexed by the large search engines? Ours are submitted and indexed every day

· Do you have back links pointing to your pages? We have an enormous number deployed

· Do you rank well for query term that you care about? We test and adjust to maximize this all the time

· Does your site make money? In our world that means do your marketing dollars make your phone ring….our testing indicates a resounding yes to this metric.

You should ask the same question about your website, enjoy..

March 17, 2009 · by Jill Kocher

Measuring success in search engine optimization can typically be done in four ways. “Indexation” measurements will determine if a search engine has properly identified all of your site’s pages. “Backlink” measurements will show the number of internal and external links that point to your site as a whole. “Rankings” measurements will show where in the natural search results your site appears for given search words or phrases. And “traffic and revenue” measurements will show the keywords used to find your site, revenue generated per keyword, the percentage of visitors that purchased products and so forth. This article will explore each of the measurements, which we refer to here as “metrics.”

Indexation Metrics

Indexation is the first critical step to natural search performance. Pages that aren’t indexed have zero chance of ranking in the search engines. However, more indexation isn’t necessarily better because that could indicate that identical pages in your site are duplicated in a search engine’s index, which will decrease a site’s ability to rank because the pages are, essentially, competing against themselves.

What is the “right” indexation number? Most ecommerce sites can only guesstimate based on the number of products they offer. For example, if a site offers 50,000 products but only has 5,000 pages indexed, there’s likely a barrier preventing a search engine from fully “crawling” a site. Conversely, if that same site has 500,000 pages indexed, there’s likely a duplication issue. The site will then have issues with self-competition and split-link popularity, both of which hinder a site’s ability to rank strongly.

Indexation is measured by performing a “site:” query in the major engines. For example, type [site:www.yourdomain.com] into the Google and MSN Live search boxes, without the [brackets]. For Yahoo!, just enter the URL into Yahoo! Site Explorer. These site queries measure how many URLs are indexed in each engine. Compare that number to the number of pages that should exist to determine actions required and progress made.

A complete list of the queries available in Google, some of which are also available on Yahoo! and MSN Live, can be found at http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html.

Backlink Metrics

Measuring “backlinks” will show the number of links pointing to various pages across a site. Generally, the more external links that point to your site, the higher your site will rank in natural search results. However, measuring backlinks varies among the search engines.

For Google, enter a “link:” query such as [link:www.yourdomain.com] in the search box. This is a measure of how many backlinks are coming into the entire domain. However, Google only gives the true measure of backlinks in its Webmaster Tools, which anyone can access once they have a Google account.

For Yahoo!, enter the domain into Yahoo! Site Explorer. Click on the “InLinks” tab and filter the results to show four different data sets: (1) all backlinks (internal & external), (2) only external backlinks, (3) only to the home page and (4) to the whole site.

For MSN, the “link:” query is currently disabled in MSN Live, so backlinks cannot be measured there.

How many backlinks should a site have? There is no way to estimate in the way we can for indexation, and the engines aren’t known for giving accurate, specific or detailed backlink data, unfortunately. The best advice for measuring backlinks is to watch the trend rather than be concerned about individual numbers. And more high quality links are always better.

Advanced Link Manager is a tool for scanning and reporting on backlink trends, including number and diversity of domains linking in, anchor text diversity, and a number of other reports.

Ranking Metrics

Rankings are a tricky metric to report on. Rankings (i.e. where your site appears in natural search listings) vary greatly between singular and plural versions of the same term. Moreover, personalized and blended search affect individual rankings so that no two people are likely to get the same ranking result. However, I suggest a couple of ways to attack this issue.

· Targeted. Choose a select set of keyword terms that you’ll target based on keyword research. These will probably include the trophy terms for which management aspires to rank. Use a subscription rank checker such as WebCEO or a free tool such as the Rank Checker plug in for Firefox to check the rankings for the terms you’re targeting. These tools will give you only the rankings for the terms you specify, for the domains you specify.

· Aggregate. Subscription tools like Enquisite offer the ability to track the page on which a term ranks for every keyword that drives natural search to your site. So, say that [widgets] drove 10 visits to mydomain.com. Enquisite would report which URLs on my site drove those 10 visits, and what page in the search results the rankings were on. The information can be sliced and sorted by keyword, URL, IP, date, engine, and more.

Traffic and Revenue Metrics

Natural search-referred traffic is a common measurement in most analytics programs. The “holy grail” for measuring SEO effectiveness is frequently a report combining URL, keyword, traffic, orders, and revenue. Such a report tells you which URLs are effective, and by omission, which are not. It tells you which keywords and keyword phrases drive traffic, and by omission which don’t. And it tells you which URLs and terms drive sales through natural search and which don’t.

Consider which pages were optimized and how, for which keywords. Those pages and keywords are the ones where you should expect to see growth. Only by performing large-scale programmatic optimizations, like title tags across the entire site, would you expect to see a site-wide increase in traffic. Most optimization efforts will improve performance for individual pages and keywords. Knowing which pages and keywords are most valuable to your business will guide those optimization efforts.

You can see the full article here

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1014-Measuring-SEO-Performance

eLocal Listing LLC of Temecula, CA, pioneers of local search marketing and search engine optimization, today announced a strategic partnership with MediaSpan Group Inc, a leading provider of digital content management and online marketing solutions, to provide eLocal Listing’s Found Fast Technology™ platform to more than 1,500 of MediaSpan’s newspaper and radio clients.

“Our local media customers are always looking for new ways to engage their audience, increase traffic and drive new revenue streams online,”

… said MediaSpan Executive Vice President of online services, Steven Barth.

“eLocal Listing’s proven SEO platform meets this need by providing powerful local search technology as well as added revenue and growth opportunities.”

eLocal Listing’s Premium and Standard Products, which utilize the Found Fast Technology™ platform, will enable local and regional media publishers to incorporate eLocal’s powerful search engine optimization solutions to get their clients found on the major search engines.

“We are pleased to partner with MediaSpan, enabling their publishers to offer a more valuable advertising experience to their clients,”

… said Tim Judd, CEO of eLocal Listing LLC.

“Combining eLocal Listing’s online advertising solutions with MediaSpan’s traditional TV and radio advertising packages will create a strong marketing media mix and will increase revenue for MediaSpan’s publishers and broadcasters. In these challenging economic times, the ability to reach local customers both on and offline is key for the best long term growth of local media, their advertisers and MediaSpan.”

MediaSpan’s publishers and broadcasters can expect to begin incorporating eLocal Listing’s online marketing products into their advertising packages in the second quarter of 2009.”

So when was the last time you used the yellow pages or any kind of phone book?  We all have them, from the Talking Phone book or the Verizon monster yellow page door-stop.  To be sure, there are times when it can be convenient — if you know exactly what you are looking for by category… a yellow page book can be handy indeed.  If you can find it when you need it, the YP generally offers a response across thousands of categories.  For us old fogies though, especially when your reading glasses are not nearby, finding both the right listing in 6 point type and the yellow page book may be a challenge simultaneously.

Given the ubiquity of a desktop computer these days, we generally know where we have parked them and head there first.  And with the ease of internet search, particularly when you start with a Google and Yahoo search bar, it just seems so much easier and immediate in finding the right local retailer or service provider you may need.  With the power of local search, consumers are increasingly relying on a search engine to navigate them to the right listing, or business web site.  And as broadband goes mainstream, fewer people are simply NOT using printed books when searching for products, and services anymore; the immediacy of search and ease of use, increasingly dictate an online search first before we hunt for the YP.

So as a small business why not put your efforts and marketing dollars where consumers are actually searching?  On the web and in the main two or three search engines!

Whether the American economy is good or bad, small business drives our overall macro economy and hiring opportunities.  As we navigate through a treacherous 2009 business climate, we still find in our call center that many small businesses either do not have a good website, or worse still they have no website at all!  We know that small business owners are among the busiest people, and adding search marketing and web site development to their list of  post 5’oclock chores just is not going to happen.   Some claim they do not have the time, finances, technical wherewithal, or marketing smarts to
develop a good website. In a tough economic climate like 09, small business owners simply cannot afford to take up the challenge of find more potential customers.  Local consumers are continually searching the internet looking for products and services and a small business owner needs to know about that intent and business opportunity. And rightly or wrongly, they often judge whether or not to do business with your company on the basis of your website or search presence.

So how does the harried, small business owner get that web site or search presence?   One of the least expensive ways, is to simply create through a service like eLocal Listing,  a one page website that is great fodder for the search engines. We call these one pager business descriptions, a Profile, or a micro site. The search engines love them and in just a matter of minutes, we can usually get a small business owner fully fleshed out for the search engines for something under a hundred dollars a month.  It does not have to cost thousands to develop a website, but you do indeed need a presence to be found in today’s online world.  A fully developed Profile with the right keywords pushed to the right search engines is one way that a local business can compete with mature websites and larger companies on an equal footing.

A Profile when done right is more than a simple website, it’s your online Listing.  An eLocal Profile is more than a simple ‘brochure’ website.  It has the right keywords, basic business description, hours, credit cards, service areas, and details about the company that would be helpful to a consumer searching for goods and services.  And since the web is such an interactive visual, we will often include a video with the company’s name and phone number featured in it.  Our Profile is engaging and entertaining and pushed to several video destination sites, like YouTube.  By getting the Profiles featured in the search engines and destination sites, we build a great presence for a business in its proper business category and locality.  By engaging site visitors and driving the phone or foot traffic to the local business, we give the owner a real chance at converting the searching consumer into a real business opportunity. In this business climate, driving traffic to your business phone, doorway or website makes good sense, especially when you can do it for less than a hundred dollars a month.

So while the print listing may not yet be dead;  in a tough economic cycle, an inexpensive eLocal Profile, or perhaps a more detailed web site is the right choice to make to get your shot at the local business opportunities that come by way of search.

How much dust is on your Yellow Page book?  Got your specs handy?

Here at eLocal Listing we focus on small businesses in America, getting them found on the major search engines (the ones that rhyme with Poodle and BaaHoo) and we do a pretty gosh darned good job at getting thousands of our customers front page search visibility…. we typically score in the 80-90% region. Although many small businesses are in fact local offices of very large businesses (think of franchises and your local Starbucks) we have tended to work with the owned and operated rather than the small branches of huge companies. The obvious reason for that is that the large companies have huge budgets and phalanxes of very smart advertising folk who have this SEO search visibility stuff down tight.

So I was intrigued to read this post from the folks at Conductor.com which indicates that the big guys are really struggling at this. What they did was track the keywords the Fortune 500 are buying as ads on the search engines then they tested to see how the same companies rank in organic search results for the same terms. The theory is that if a company is prepared to pay for the top spot in search through the sponsored ads they should also be doing the spade work to get found in the organic unpaid part of search. Survey says …..they aren’t. Only 20% of the keywords tested also ranked well in unpaid search. Amazingly nearly half of the fortune 500 had low or non-existent visibility in natural search for their most advertised keywords.

Somebody get me Coke and GE on the phone!

You can read the full story here

Danny Sullivan recently posted an interesting article about the rise in popularity of SEO, and some of the press it was receiving from the Los Angeles Times. Read below and let us know what you think of the coverage given by the LA Times.

What a nice surprise to see on the front page of the Los Angeles Times today a story that features how important SEO is to web sites.

It’s Web 101 for this experienced intern covers how a former magazine editor, Lois Draegin, has entered a new life of online editing after losing her job with TV Guide. She now works as an unpaid intern for women’s site wow0wow.

As part of her new job, she’s discovered that how people search — and maintaining a search friendly web site — is an essential part of the content process. From the opening of the story:

In a search for a new job in the media, she had suddenly found herself techno-challenged. She didn’t know a URL from SEO.

It wasn’t until she was teamed up with Randi Bernfeld at WOW that she understood the obsession with terms such as search engine optimization (a method to increase traffic to a website) or used Google Trends to pick story topics and write a uniform resource locater (Web address).

And further in:

Arriving before 8 one day, her immediate task was to look for story ideas and mash together information from other websites into a brief news item for the “Wow Watch” column. Finding topics was easy enough — Draegin fits WOW’s demographic and instinctively understands the interests of its savvy readers.

But she repeatedly had to check her gut instincts against that all-important tool — Google Trends — to make sure her ideas would attract readers to the website. That morning, she chose to put yet another angle on a story about the California mother of octuplets who has been omnipresent on the Web.

In the past, she hadn’t bothered to learn such skills as writing tags and URLs because she was paid to think globally about the direction of her magazine. Now she had to think globally not only about each topic but about every word she wrote in the URL, headline, subhead, tag and links in the story.

Everything had to be crafted to draw readers.

“It’s really a challenge to do all of that at once,” Draegin said.

It is definitely an exciting time in our industry, and as more people turn to the internet to find products and services, Search Marketing for local businesses is becoming more of need for businesses looking to expand their customer base, and drive revenue.

Search Engine Land has another great article by Barry Schwartz taking a look at Google’s new “Interest-Based Advertising” beta.  This looks to provide a big advantage for both consumers and advertisers. (Read below)

Google today is launching a form of behavioral targeting advertising named Interest-Based Advertising. Interest-Based Advertising allows advertisers to deliver ads based on hundreds of interest categories and previous interactions with those users. The beta is opening to select advertisers at first but will be expanded in the upcoming months.

Brad Bender, Google’s Product Manager in display offerings on Google Content Network, explained that Google is looking to make ads “more interesting” to users and more effective for advertisers. Interest-Based Advertising allows Google to do that by giving users control over their interest categories and advertisers the ability to target based on those categories and user’s previous actions.

Interest based categories are based on the type of web site a browser visits. For example, if a user visits ESPN often, Google will know that user is interested in sports. Bender told me Google currently has 30 top line categories and about 600 detailed categories. In addition, users have control over these categories and can add or remove categories in the user ad preferences section at google.com/ads/preferences.

Previous interaction is the second area of Interest Based advertising where Google is able to show ads to users based on their browsers previous interaction with that advertiser. For example, if a user had a product in their shopping cart and did not check out, the advertiser can display ads on other sites, within the Google network, that promote that product or that product line. This is Google leveraging their DoubleClick technology from the acquisition in April 2007.

To read the complete article (which I highly recommend) Click Here

I wanted to welcome you to the new improved eLocal Blog. It’s a place where our team can share insights into where we are going and and what we are doing to get there. This is a really interesting and exciting time in our story. As you may know we are highly focused on getting our customers great marketing value online. We do that mostly through our special flavor of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I found this very interesting article recently which talks about how even in very tough economic times SEO is showing strong growth. It’s an approach to marketing which works across the board. This article is more focused towards SEO for larger businesses. We specialize in delivering great SEO value for the small business which comprise the backbone of the US economy and we do it a price point most small businesses can afford.

Very best wishes

Tim

SEO Investments Expected To Grow More Than 20%
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=101301
As marketers begin to better understand how Web site optimization fits into overall campaigns, budget investments in search engine optimization (SEO) will grow at a higher rate each year, compared with other types of search marketing strategies, according to a recent report from eMarketer.

The report, “Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics,” suggests that growth will decline for paid search from 15.9% in 2009 to 11.3% in 2013–while SEO growth will jump from 17.7% to 20.3%, respectively.

“Every company is losing some business because of the economy, whether they buy less, or not at all,” said David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst. “There is a greater focus on customer acquisition. Search is the best tool for that.”

Internet users generally find organic listings more relevant than paid search ads, so they tend to click on the search engine results more often than pay-per-click (PPC) ads, Hallerman said. But marketers should design campaigns that combine paid search advertising and SEO.

Overall, U.S. spending on search engine marketing will nearly double from $12.2 billion in 2008 to $23.4 billion in 2013. All four types of search marketing will gain more marketer dollars each year.

Successful deployment of both methods could mean higher rankings in search query results. Each offers benefits. For example, paid search’s effects are immediate, but marketers need to spend consistently for those sponsored-link ads to appear in search results. SEO effects take time, but marketers need Web site maintenance more than daily spending to sustain high organic results. How long it takes to deliver a return on investments (ROI) depends on conversions, Hallerman said.

While lots of data makes search more accountable than other ad media, too much data could overwhelm marketers and create confusion that clouds decisions, according to Hallerman. More important, the abundance of data makes Web analytics crucial for managing the process.

While marketers might see increased traffic as positive, if the search ad’s cost relative to its conversion rate means a reduced bottom line, the marketer would need to examine the strategy, including bids on certain keywords, keywords to bid on, and the search engine to place ads on.

“Far more marketers say SEO is much harder to gauge because it has far less metrics,” Hallerman said. “SEO is like public relations. You hope people will notice and buy the product. It’s a lot like tracking buzz.”