By Kalena Jordan

When you write web site content and design your pages, do you truly act with your target audience in mind? Or do you think global and act local?

I am amazed at the number of web sites I see that claim to target a global market, yet design and write their content for a regionally-specific audience. Not sure what I mean? Take the site I saw yesterday, for example. I won’t embarrass the site owners by pointing to the specific domain, but let’s just say the site is based in the U.S. and sells high quality gold chains throughout North America, Europe and Australia.

Now the owner of this site was complaining loudly in a webmaster forum that his pay-per-click campaign was having no luck converting sales from overseas visitors, particularly in the UK and Australia. He had spent a long time developing and tweaking a landing page for the campaign and he couldn’t work out why hardly anyone outside the U.S. was buying. I took a look at his landing page and could see the problems straight away:

1) He used the American English spelling “jewelry” throughout the page without considering that persons who use British English spell it “jewellery”.

2) He provided a toll-free phone number for persons in the U.S. to call, but did not provide any contact phone number for persons located outside the U.S.

3) He used the word “national” throughout the page, immediately isolating anyone outside the U.S.

4) He promoted “free shipping throughout the U.S.” but did not specify shipping costs for persons outside the U.S.

The owner of this site had not even considered that persons outside the U.S. might search for keywords in anything other than American English. It didn’t even occur to him that there may be an alternative spelling of his main keyword and he didn’t think about the logistics for purchasers outside his country. No wonder the page wasn’t converting outside the U.S.! He had made the classic mistake of isolating a large chunk of his audience by sending everyone to a one-size-fits-some page.

What he should have done was to create a separate landing page using British English spelling and shipping/contact information applicable to persons overseas. He could then have set up a unique PPC campaign targeting only UK/Australian searchers with regional keywords and ads leading to the British English landing page.

I see similar problems occur quite often in the online travel industry where you not only have to deal with regional spelling options, but also regional jargon. Think about the word “accommodation”. Apart from the fact the word is commonly misspelled, it is used most often in the UK, Australia and New Zealand to describe places to stay while traveling. In the U.S., the words “accommodations” and “lodging” are more commonly used. Same goes for “holiday” and “vacation”, with the latter being more common in the U.S. The word “traveling” itself is spelled “travelling” in British English! So you can imagine the minefield of problems webmasters must face promoting their travel sites online to a worldwide audience.

I don’t mean to single out a particular country, but Americans seem to find it especially difficult to step outside their regional mindset. I am always receiving emails from the U.S. with helpful suggestions for fixing my “spelling mistakes”.

The funniest email exchange I ever had in relation to this was from an American web designer. She had seen our Australian-based web site (with a .com.au domain) and emailed me to tell me it was “full of errors” and that if I wanted to present a professional business to site visitors, I should correct them. So condescending! I asked her to elaborate and she pointed me to these words she felt were spelled incorrectly:

optimisation
counselling
organised
enrolment
colour
catalogue
favourite
centre

Resisting the urge to use a few offensive words I’m sure she would recognize, I tactfully explained that our site was only targeting the Australian market and that we use British English spelling in Australia. Her response? Perhaps if we wanted to be taken seriously by an international audience, we should consider using the “more proper” American English. Flabbergasted, I pointed out the fact that American English was a derivative of British English and was not widely used outside her own country. Wikipedia has more about the differences between the two here. And let’s not forget that although it is the most common language used on the web, English is used by less than 30 percent of the world’s total Internet users.

The point of this story is that you absolutely have to think outside your market if you are going to advertise on the web. As ignorant as she was, my email friend did make me realize that many of her compatriots might also think our site was full of errors. American English is more common on the web and I’ve since learned to cater to that trend. I try to remember that in all writing I do for the web now, whether it’s in my daily blog, the syndicated articles I write regularly or web page content.

Whenever you design or write for a web site that has an international audience, make sure you address each market. It pays to undertake detailed keyword research into your markets you are targeting so you can capture the correct regional jargon and spelling that people are searching for. Remember it’s not enough to think global, you’ve got to act global too.

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by Anna Tulchinsky

If you are responsible for lead generation campaigns at a B2B company, white papers and case studies would always be your best SEO tools.

Assuming that you have already done your keyword analysis, here are some of the things you need to do in order to achieve good SEO results with your white papers and case studies:

1. Try to get your site to contain as many static pages as possible (indexable URLs)
2. Arrange all files in as many directories as you can, do not place them all in the root.
3. Name your directories and your files using your most desired keywords (separate words with underscores)
4. Include your keywords in all Page Titles
5. Include your company name in all Page Titles

6. Do not worry about META tags if you don’t know how to add them, your Page Title is your most important tag
7. Include your keywords in H1s, H2, and H3s. Make sure you use these tags!
8. Create a style format where each title of a PDF document is accompanied by a short abstract, as opposed to being a simple link, and use keywords
9. Add both an ‘abstract’ and a ’summary’ component to your white paper template, this will allow you to use your keywords multiple times without annoying your readers
10.Add a ‘table of contents’ component to your white paper template, this is a great way to repeat your keywords again

11. Add a ‘company name’ component in the footer of your white paper template and provide your website URL
12. Interlink your site’s internal pages as often as you can (e.g. use margins and place “Related Info” boxes with links to other pages on your site)
13. Your links should have your keyword embedded within, do not use “click here”
14. Try to ensure that each page (i.e. each URL) has approximately 500 words on it with your most important keywords repeated 10-12 times per page
15. Make sure all your press releases contain your most important keywords and are published in full on your website

16. Give out your white papers to your partners and customers and try to get them to post it on their websites
17. Add an RSS component to your website and place each white paper there
18. Register your RSS feed in as many RSS directories as possible
19. Convince your management to allow you to distribute your RSS content via PRweb.com or PR.com. Do this in addition to using your company’s official PR firm.
20. Use PayPerPost and similar services to earn back links on the cheap (bloggers will publish comments about your company and a link to your website on their blogs; make sure to request permanent links)
About the Author
Anna Tulchinsky is an Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert, specializing in web-based lead generation and sales strategies since 2001. She is the president of annatulchinsky.com, an SEO Ottawa firm.

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By Kalena Jordan

With the increasing uptake of social media sites such as Digg, Technorati, Slashdot, YouTube and MySpace, together with community bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit and Ma.gnolia, companies the world over can reach their target markets via a whole new channel.

Social networking is like viral marketing on steroids. Companies can release a new product in the morning and have it talked about by millions of users on thousands of sites by the afternoon.

The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there’s the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it’s not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It’s anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand.

Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg’s unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don’t Digg Being Dugg.

Online communities can even bring a site to its knees. Marketers are calling it the “Digg Effect” or the “Slashdot Effect”. Buzz for a site can cause more than good or bad publicity. As Kim found out, the effect can cause traffic overload sometimes resulting in site downtime and lost business.

Social media can also kill the reputation of a brand instantly. Take the Microsoft Windows Vista Laptop Scandal for instance. No stranger to the benefits of social media, Microsoft had allegedly tried to exploit the power of the blogosphere at the end of last year, by sending a number of A-list bloggers a free Acer Ferrari laptop loaded with the yet-to-be-released Windows Vista and Office 2007.

The pitch was a request for the bloggers to “review” the new Windows software in their influential blogs. Many bloggers did write a review, but some did not disclose their free gift. When this fact was discovered later, the bloggers were hammered by large portions of the blogosphere for what they saw as a clear conflict of interest. Microsoft were tagged both literally and figuratively as bribers and Windows Vista was widely panned with parody tag lines such as “Vista: So Bad We Had to Give it Away”. Not a great start to an online product release.

Another example of the damage that social networking can do to a company’s online reputation is the National Pork Board of America’s recent battle with breastfeeding advocate and well-known blogger Jennifer Laycock. Jennifer was sent a harshly worded letter from the Pork Board’s representing counsel, threatening her with legal action for allegedly stealing their pro-pork slogan “Pork: The Other White Meat” in a pro-breastfeeding t-shirt she had designed that read “The Other White Milk”.

The letter suggested that their case for trademark infringement was probably solid. Unfortunately for the Pork Board, the poorly-worded letter also suggested that they were insensitive to breastfeeding mothers and the plight of starving infants. The Pork Board didn’t count on Jennifer’s influence in the blogosphere and the power of social networking to carry her defiant response to the world. The Pork Board ended up receiving bags of hate mail and thousands of flame emails via their online contact form, forcing them to issue a public apology to Jennifer from the Board’s CEO and a generous donation to the Mother’s Milk Bank of Ohio in order to save face.

To their credit, the Pork Board did the right thing. They also made sure that all persons who complained about their approach to Jennifer received a polite, measured email response from the CEO. As a former PR consultant myself, I tip my hat at them. Having the apology come from the very top is smart. It demonstrates how seriously they took the complaints. The wording of the complainant response is polite and restrained. Addressing each and every complainer personally is impressive. It would’ve been tempting to ignore all the flames and issue some stock standard release.

Their choice of legal team may have been questionable, but the Pork Board’s public relations team mobilized quickly, upgraded to full damage control mode and did a great job of mopping up the PR mess before it spread too far. Social media might have damaged them, but the Pork Board’s reputation was ultimately salvaged by quick thinking and a swift online response.

Such situations underscore the growing importance of online reputation management (ORM) in our Web 2.0, social media-driven world. Companies should be tracking their online reputation on a daily basis to check for negative commentary via social media in order to avert potential PR disasters. Major search marketing players such as Andy Beal recognized the potential growth in ORM a long time ago. But I wonder how many PR/Search Marketing agencies currently offer this service?

With brand reputation increasingly at risk, you can be sure the smart agencies will be adding ORM to their service offerings faster than you can say “Can you Digg it?”

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By Kalena Jordan

Is your web site search engine compatible? Despite all the misinformation out there, it’s very easy to design a web site that search engines will love. All you need to do is follow 3 simple steps:

1) Obey the Search Engine Guidelines

Nearly all search engines publish their own guidelines regarding the submission of sites, the type of sites they will accept and recommendations for optimized content. Google recently updated their Webmaster Guidelines which cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative search engine behavior that they consider to be ’spam’. They also published SEO Guidelines – advice for webmasters to heed when choosing an SEO. Google was the first search engine to publicly acknowledge search engine optimizers in this fashion.

It’s not just Google publishing anti-spam guidelines. You’ll find them at the following search engine sites as well:

* Yahoo terms of service
* Yahoo guidelines on search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
* Yahoo definitions of search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
* Yahoo content guidelines
* MSN Search webmaster guidelines
* AltaVista terms of use (AltaVista is a Yahoo-owned company)
* Ask.com terms of service and spam policy
* Ask.com editorial guidelines

2) Don’t Use Spammy Search Engine Tactics

Often, webmasters will use search engine spam techniques without even being aware that they are doing so. Or worse, web designers can - advertently or inadvertently - integrate techniques that could cause a site to be penalized in the site’s rankings in one or more engines, without the site owner’s knowledge of such penalties. The key to avoiding spamming the engines is research.
Keep track of the various search engine guidelines via the links above. Watch for any changes they make to these guidelines and tweak your site accordingly. Trawl the various webmaster and search engine forums regularly to ensure your site doesn’t use any of the latest optimization methods that appear to be penalized. If you suspect your site has been penalized, remove the offending content, contact the engine concerned and ask to be reinstated.

Google actually encourage you to file a re-inclusion request via their Help Center and this post by Google staffer Matt Cutts outlines what should be included.

Alternatively, here is a sample email template you can use instead:

——————————————–
Sample Re-inclusion Request Email

Dear [search engine name],

I am the owner of [your site URL].

I did not realize that participation in [spammy method] and
[spammy SEO name] programs could cause problems for my website. I was
assured that these techniques were search-engine-friendly by [your source for using spammy method].

I now understand that the practices used are not acceptable. I apologize for having allowed them to be placed on my website. I’ve removed the questionable pages and links from the site. I promise not to repeat such mistakes.

I am asking you to please consider reinstating my website,
[your site URL] into the [search engine name] Index.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
——————————————

To assist them to provide a high quality service, search engines encourage people to report search results they are dissatisfied with. If you spot some content spam or techniques that are clearly in breach of the search engine’s public guidelines, you can report it using these links:

* Google spam report or via search-quality@google.com
* AllTheWeb relevancy problem report (AllTheWeb is a Yahoo-owned company)
* AltaVista search results manipulation report (or via Yahoo’s spam report)
* Yahoo spam report
* Ask.com spam report or via information@ask.com

3) Build Sites for Visitors Rather than Search Engines

The methodologies may have changed over the years, but the same principles have always applied to “good” or “white hat” SEO. Build sites for humans, not search engines. Make the site as user friendly as possible, avoid the bells and whistles and include high quality, relevant content.

Wherever possible, include text-based content and navigation menus with simple, descriptive, well-written copy designed to convert your visitors into customers. Include keywords and phrases your audience would logically type in to search engines to find sites like yours. Only link to sites that are relevant to your target audience and spend some time on usability, making sure all your forms and shopping carts work.

Remember that what pleases a visitor is almost always what pleases a search engine too.

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By Kalena Jordan

In this article, I’m going to show you step-by-step how to create search engine optimized Titles and META Tags. This is a two part article. This part discusses the Title Element, also known as the Title Element. (Click here to read Part Two).

The TITLE Element

TITLE elements, (commonly called TITLE Tags), are one of the most important factors that search engines “look” at when it comes to determining the relevancy of a web page against a search query. In their ranking algorithms, nearly all the major search engines attribute a high relevancy weight to the content of the TITLE tag.

In the HTML code of a web site, TITLE tags look like this one for a fictional florist:

[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]

(Please note that square brackets [ ] have been used in place of open and closing tags < > to prevent this page code from breaking. You’ll need to replace all square brackets with open and closing tags.)

To view the HTML code of any site, choose “View, Source” from your browser toolbar or right click anywhere on the page and choose “view source code”.

The META Description Tag

META Description Tags are designed to describe the content of web pages. Search engine robots will gather up this information when indexing web sites and often use it when referencing web pages in the search listings.

While not all search engines continue to utilize the META Description Tag, a majority of search engines rely on the content of this tag (together with a site’s visible content) to provide information about a site that they can match with search queries. It is therefore important for webmasters to include keywords and phrases in the META description that they would expect searchers to use to find their site content.

In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Description Tag looks like this:

[META name=”description” content=”Miami Florists create beautiful floral bouquets, arrangements, tributes and displays for all occasions, including weddings, Valentines Day, parties and corporate events. Deliveries throughout Florida.”]

You can view the META Description Tag of a site by viewing the source code.

The META Keywords Tag

While only indexed by a small handful of search engines these days, the META Keywords Tag is still worth including within a site’s HTML code, if only to provide those search engines with as much information as possible about site content.

In the HTML code of a web site, a sample META Keywords Tag looks like this:

[META name=”keywords” content=”flowers, roses, weddings bouquets, florists, floral arrangements, flower deliveries, Valentines Day gifts, Christmas decorations, Mother’s Day, tributes, wreaths, clutches, sprays, in sympathy, funerals, corporate functions, parties, floral displays, Miami, Florida”]

The current lack of support for the META Keywords Tag by so many search engines can be attributed to increasing spam abuse by ignorant webmasters. These webmasters thought the keyword tag was a good place to stuff hundreds of keywords in the hope of achieving a higher search ranking, thereby “spamming” the search engines with useless, non-relevant data. This prompted many search engines to filter out the META Keywords Tag or lower its importance within the ranking algorithm.

You can view the META Keywords Tag of a site by viewing the source code.

Create Your Own Optimized Tags

Now, it’s time to create optimized TITLE and META Tags for your own site. Let’s start with the TITLE Tag for your Home Page.

Create Your TITLE Tag

Take the list of target keywords and phrases that you want your web site to be found for in search engines. You should have already allocated them to the appropriate pages of your site to be optimized. I use a spreadsheet for this purpose but you should use whatever works for you.

Now, open a text file in Notepad or something similar. If you like, you can use an existing sample TITLE Tag as your template. Let’s say our existing Title is:

[TITLE]Miami Florists - beautiful floral creations made to order.[/TITLE]

Now take your list of keywords for the home page and put them in order of importance, with the ones you want to rank highest for at the top. For our fictional florist these are:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- wedding bouquets

Now you are simply going to combine these keywords into a sentence or short blurb so they make the best use of the keyword real estate available. Always try to use as few words as possible in your Title Tags, because each additional keyword dilutes the ranking relevancy of all the others.

In this case, I would initially combine the keywords as follows:

Florists in Miami Florida specializing in wedding bouquets.

Notice how I’ve got the keywords in the correct order for the search queries? I’ve tried to include the most important keywords towards the start of the tag. There was no need for me to repeat the keyword “Florists” more than once because the sentence I’ve used covers both “Florists Miami” and “Florists Florida”. Most search engines will ignore “in” as a stop word, so it shouldn’t matter that we’ve included it.

Although it’s tempting to put a comma between Miami and Florida, on some search engines commas act as a keyword separator, so we don’t want to use one here because we don’t want “Florists” and “Florida” to be separated.

Now, there is just one problem with this draft Title. Our 3rd keyword phrase “wedding bouquets” is right at the end of the sentence, meaning it may lose some relevancy weight (search engines consider keywords closer to the start of the tag as the most important). How do we fix this? Let’s try this:

Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.

We don’t want to use a period after “Florida” for the same reason that we don’t use a comma. But a hyphen should not make a difference to search engines yet still allow the sentence to read logically to a searcher. So now we have our three target keyword phrases covered in a very short space.

In fact, the above sentence now covers the following keyword combinations:

- florists Miami
- florists Florida
- florists in Miami
- florists in Florida
- florists in Miami Florida
- wedding bouquets
- Miami wedding bouquets
- Florida wedding bouquets

When integrating your keywords, remember that their order is important. If you want your site to have the best possible chance of being found for the search query “Miami florists”, you need to put the keywords in that exact order and not “florists Miami”, because the spider searches the keywords in exact order. Unless they are stop words, also try to avoid using extra words between your keywords.

If you wanted to, you could integrate your company name into the Title tag, but (unless your company name is super short or includes a keyword), don’t sacrifice a keyword to do so. Instead, try placing the company name at the end of the tag so you can be sure that all your important keywords will be indexed first.

In the case of our florist, let’s imagine their name was Funky Florists. We could easily accommodate the name into the beginning of our optimized Title as follows:

[TITLE]Funky Florists in Miami Florida - wedding bouquets a specialty.[/TITLE]

It may reduce the keyword relevancy impact very slightly, but including your company name enables you to brand your page, which may be more important to you.

The content of the Title Tag is also what gets saved in a person’s Favorite’s list when they bookmark your site, so having your company name included is worth considering from a branding perspective.

In Part 2 of this article, I will show you how to create your optimized META Description and META Keywords Tags.

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