Posts Tagged search
Written on September 3, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
Texas Attorney General Investigating Google & Antitrust Issues
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conducting an investigation into Google’s business practices as they relate to search listings, in particular whether Google is manipulating its [...]
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SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 3, 2010
Written on September 2, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
Google Showing Four Top AdWords Ads, Top One Google Mortgage Ad
When I search for [mortgage rates] in Google, I am presented with dozens of Google AdWords ads on the search page. But [...]
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SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 2, 2010
Written on September 2, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object
When I search for [mortgage rates] in Google, I am presented with dozens of Google AdWords ads on the search page. But what is interesting is that the top ads is showing four different AdWords ads. I believe, I may be wrong, Google normally shows up to three ads in the ads above [...]
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Google Showing Four Top AdWords Ads, Top One Google Mortgage Ad
Tags: different ,full ,google-adwords ,google-mortgage ,headline ,mortgage-rates ,other-places ,places ,presented-with ,search ,search-for ,the-ads
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Written on September 2, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: book, searchengineguide
by Stoney deGeyter
Much like life, websites have to adapt over time. When they don’t, they risk becoming stagnant, outdated, stale, and boring. As times change, so should your content. Content that was once relevant becomes irrelevant or in need of an update, old products get dumped in favor of new products, and data becomes outdated and needs to be replaced.
There are any number of reasons why content needs to be changed, freshened up, or removed altogether. But rarely, if ever, do you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Something can usually be salvaged. Previously valuable content can be made valuable again. Here are four ways you can keep good content alive, even when it’s old.
Keep content up to date
Keeping your content up-to-date may sound like a simple task; but, the larger the site, the more difficult it is. Sites with hundreds or thousands of pages often have a lot of little hidden gems that can easily become stale or irrelevant. Over time, you see products and services change. A simple reference to an old pricing structure or outdated way of doing things can really throw a wrench in the works for the reader. Conflicts and contradictions breed mistrust.
Failing to find and correct these nuggets will send your readers a message that perhaps you are stale and irrelevant as well. So, spending time on a regular basis, perhaps yearly, reviewing all your editorial content and brushing it up to keep it current is an important item to put on your task list.
Redirect deleted pages
Pages on websites often get moved or deleted over time. Perhaps you are restructuring your information architecture, removing services that you no longer offer, or deleting tutorials that have become obsolete. Just because this content is considered old, doesn’t mean that it can’t still work for you.
Simply adding “301 redirects” or a building a custom “404″ page can capture that traffic and send them to other areas of your site. This allows them to stick around long enough to see if you still have something that will meet their needs, even though you no longer have exactly what they want.
Adding redirects allows you to keep visitors on your site if they have arrived, say, from a bookmarked page or an old page in the search results. Instead of losing those visitors, this gives you the opportunity to keep them engaged with your site, with the possibility of attracting them to your other excellent content.
Repurpose old content
Blogs are a great place to re-purpose old content and provide an updated spin on it. If you’re running out of ideas for what to publish on your blog, you can go back several years in your archive and find old topics and discussions for which you can provide a new take.
Blog back history can give you a wealth of topics that you can pull from to create fresh, new content for your readers.
Another way to re-purpose old content is by removing excessive content from your site and moving it over to your blog. This can be necessary after years of site content build-up. This happens when you keep adding content to your site and it becomes so bloated that your readers end up spending too much time working through your site instead of being moved through the conversion process.
A couple months back, I worked on the Information Architecture for a client, and they had this very problem. We were able to take dozens of pages of content and move it off of their main site onto their blog. The content was good, but it was excessive. This hindered the conversion process, making the site both convoluted and confusing at the same time. By moving this stuff to the blog, the main site was better able to do the job of selling and the blog became the avenue of informing readers.
Link to historical pages
Content, especially blog content, often gets buried after months and years of time passing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the content isn’t valuable or even needs to be re-written.
What you can do is write new content that links to this valuable content that was written long ago. You’re giving your readers something fresh, while linking to something historical, that you can use to make your point or provide more detailed information for the reader to peruse at their leisure.
Take advantage of any area of content that allows you to link to another page that provides more information. The web isn’t a brochure, it’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. That historical content can be a goldmine of information, provided you’re giving your new readers a way to access it.
Good content never has to die. If you’re treating it right, it never will. New people are coming to your site every day. These people have not had the benefit of reading all your past or historical stuff. No need to let it go to waste. Instead, keep it alive… and keep it working for you.
This post was inspired from The Princess Bride themed presentation I gave in early 2010 at SEMpdx’s Searchfest titled Inconceivable Content: The Dread Pirate Robert’s Guide to Creating Swashbuckling Content, Pillaging the Search Engines, and Commandeering a Treasure Trove of Conversions. If you enjoyed this post you also might enjoy other posts inspired from the same. Search for “inconceivable content” on this blog to find them all.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
Originally posted here:
Don’t Let Good Content Die - 4 Ways to Keep It Alive
Written on September 2, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: marketing, searchengineguide
by Mike Moran
Some of you might know that I like to take Augusts off. While not completely off the grid (I still clean out my e-mail—although I don’t reply much—and I still moderate comments on my blog), I don’t write any blog posts (on my blog or here at Search Engine Guide), and I stay off Twitter. I also don’t read any blog posts or check out what others are saying on Twitter—it’s a social media fast. Each year, it’s interesting to find myself picking up a newspaper again. This year, I did something a bit different, because I actually returned to work on August 25th because of a client need, but I continued to stay away from social media for the last week, just to see what it was like. It’s one thing for me to avoid social media while I am on vacation, but what would it feel like during my work day?
Well, the verdict is in. It felt very strange. As easy as it is for me to drop out of social media while on vacation and just hang with my wife and play with the kids, once I am back at work, it felt very odd to not know what is going on.
I mean, I had been away for three weeks on vacation, so I really had no idea what was happening, but to be working in that kind of darkness was a different experience. The first thing I had to do was to fly to a distant city and make a speech on Internet marketing to hundreds of people. In doing so, I was gripped by this semi-insane fear that I couldn’t make the speech without knowing what is going on. I mean, what if someone asked a question about something that just happened and I didn’t know the answer?
Of course, the speech went just fine. Internet marketing apparently hasn’t changed all that much in the last month (even though apparently the Web died while I was away).
But I also noticed how much I wanted to say, with no one to tell. I usually tweet about where I am traveling, so I had to resist the impulse to tell people about my trip last week. People would send me links to things to read—not only didn’t I read them, but I didn’t tell anyone about them. I’ll probably catch up over the next week and tweet some of them.
But it was the blog ideas that just kept coming. And I wasn’t writing any of them.
Usually, I post to my blog once each day (usually I am the writer of the article, but I also edit contributions from some other excellent contributors), so every day it is a struggle to get that done. I take for granted that nice people out there are actually interested in hearing what I have to say. It was strange to have a few work days where I wasn’t publishing anything. (Frank Reed published several posts on my blog while I was away, but I didn’t have any work to do while on vacation.)
I now have dozens of ideas for blog posts. most accumulated during the last week at work, with only a couple from my vacation. So, while my vacation definitely recharged my batteries, my social media fast during my first week back from work filled my creative coffers. Perhaps many of you post just once a week, or even less frequently, so this is not an issue for you. And while I’ve never felt like I am running dry for ideas, going a few days without having to write anything has been an eye-opener.
So, I still haven’t completely caught up on what’s been going on, but I will soon. My social media fast has proven to me both how important social media is and how important it is to take a break now and then. Some have told me that they only look at social media during defined times of the day (I know some who do this with e-mail, too). I never understood that before, but maybe I am starting to.
Anyway, I am glad to be back, and I’m honored that a few of you actually want to listen to what I have to say. Thank you.
Be sure and visit our small business news site.
Excerpt from:
Adapting to a Social Media Fast
Tags: a-bit-different ,a-distant-city ,a-social-media ,article ,internet ,kids ,search ,search-engine ,social ,social-network ,trip ,wife ,work ,writer
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Written on September 1, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
Google Maps “Sponsored Map Icons” Test Comes To U.S.
Google Maps is now testing “sponsored map icons” in the United States. This was first tested back in March in the Australian version of [...]
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SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 1, 2010
Written on September 1, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object
Google Maps is now testing “sponsored map icons” in the United States. This was first tested back in March in the Australian version of Google Maps. The sponsored map icons are basically company logo enhanced points of interest icons.
For example, instead of seeing a generic ATM machine icon on Google Maps, [...]
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Google Maps “Sponsored Map Icons” Test Comes To U.S.
Tags: full ,icon-on-google ,interest-icons- ,logo-enhanced ,machine-icon ,now-testing ,places ,search ,sponsored-map ,united ,united-states ,what-happened
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Written on September 1, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object
Some of you may remember my debut Search Engine Land post which looked at the process for buying an iPhone 4 on various UK retailers. The article went down quite well so I’d like to repeat this process for another set of websites to see how they convert visitors into buyers.
This time I’ve chosen [...]
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Case Study: Which Online Grocer Has The Best Conversion Process
Tags: another-set ,article-went ,debut ,for-buying ,headline ,looked-at-the ,post-which ,process ,search ,search-engine ,the-full ,the-process
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Written on September 1, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Object
Need authority links? Twitter is one of the best ways I’ve found to get your site (or yourself as the case may be) on the radar of the journalists who decide what topics and websites are discussed (and linked to) in mainstream media.
Interacting with the folks who report on your chosen industry on Twitter – [...]
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How To Identify Industry Specific & Mainstream Media On Twitter
Written on August 30, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: chat
Long tail keywords when grouped together can often bring in more traffic than shorter keywords with a lot more competition in the search engines. But how do you attract those visitors You will need to write long tail content geared to bringing them in. Keep reading to learn how to do this to increase your traffic from Google and the other search engines….
GoGrid Cloud Center Connect Cloud and Dedicated Servers on Your Private Data Center
Excerpt from:
Increase Google Traffic: Long Tail Content Techniques
Tags: a-lot-more ,connect-cloud ,google ,increase-your ,keywords-with ,often-bring ,other-search ,private ,private-data ,search ,servers-on-your ,tail-keywords ,traffic
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