Traffic does matters in search engine rankings. While social media marketing and link-building are very important factors, research has shown that traffic to a website can influence search rankings.

Google has always that its primary task is to deliver value to searchers, and it is known that Google looks at backlinks , bounce rates, and RSS subscriptions. It is most likely that these factors could be considered important by Google in terms of measuring website authority and value, which could be translated into search rankings. If your site has a high bounce rate, Google could view it as a negative vote from viewers and hence drop your rankings, on the other hand if viewers often click on your site and stay with it , it could have a positive impact on your search results.

The Title tag is considered to be the most important on-page element of search engine optimization. Most search engines assign maximum value to the Title tag when determining what sites to index, since the Title tag is what usually shows up for the title of your listing in search results.

Having customized Title tags for every page of the website is an essential part of successful optimization

• Personalize each title tag for each page of your site if you would like your web pages to rank high in the SERPs. Ensure that the title tag references what the page is actually about.
  Place your most optimized keyword phrases at the beginning of the title tag; so that there is no fear of the phrases getting cut off due to character restrictions from the search engines.
  •Make your Title relevant and appropriate to what your site’s focus is, making sure that it’s a readable title that will appeal to viewers and the Search engines.
  • If you are targeting specific geographic locations, put the geographical location in your title tag. Ensure that you do not stuff the Title tags with too many localizations and or key terms to avoid being penalized for spam.

Yesterday we received an email from a client who was concerned because his traffic from ReachLocal has come to a screeching halt:

This led me to look at a two other clients who I knew to be using ReachLocal, and I found similar drops there:

Did Panda kill ReachLocal? I don’t think so. Panda was rolled out on February 24th, and none of the traffic drops shown above correspond directly to that date. They do, however, correspond pretty well to a duplicate content update that happened about a month earlier.

Very interesting indeed.

EDIT:  After some additional digging, I realized that it was NOT a Google update that cause ReachLocal traffic to tank. The traffic drop was caused by our update to the asynchronous multi-subdomain version of the Google Analytics code. Since the multi-subdomain code specifies a root URL, ReachLocal traffic, which exists on a different hostname, stopped tracking. This is not a bad thing since it was never referral traffic in the first place – it existed entirely within the ReachLocal version of the site. The occasional blips seen after the drop are a true reflection of actual referral traffic from ReachLocal. Basically, the ReachLocal traffic we saw before was actually a sort of data contamination which now has been eliminated.

The goal of any business’ website is to increase leads and conversions, in order to be successful the site needs to be on the top pages of the major Search engines and therefore needs to be both viewer and search-engine friendly. Redesigning your website can be an effective way of repositioning your brand, or changing public perceptions of your company.
However, redesigning a site without keeping in mind the search engine aspect can cause a negative impact on your SE results. It is therefore imperative to include your optimization specialists in the initial discussions about the redesign so that the changes that come about in the redesign do not cause your site to lose any of it’s existing “equity” .

As the new site is designed, the site architecture, content, internal links, navigation and meta data should be taken into consideration. The impact of external links should be considered as well so redirects that are both user and search engine friendly can be planned. It is important to keep the site content rich and design it in a way that the SE spidrers can crawl important information about the business. A site redesign or change in content management system may need a migration plan to ensure a smooth transition of existing categories, link URLs and anchor text. If the site changes URLs, 301 redirects must be put in place. Making sure that the redesigned site has an updated HTML and XML site map can help search engines find and crawl new content.

When there are major changes to a web site’s design, content and URL structure, there will be some effect on the search engine visibility of a site, However, if the fundamental elements are taken care of, one can greatly minimize any negative effects and have an appealing new site that stays on the first page of the search engines.

The other day, a troll hit me up on Quora, and I tweeted about it. It wasn’t long before Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever (@ccheever on Twitter) came to my rescue:

and a bit later:

With such excellent customer service as that, you better believe that Charlie Cheever earned himself a new Twitter follower. Monitoring brand mentions for instant, proactive CRM is an excellent use of Twitter. Many kudos to Charlie for that!

Recounting the incident later to friends, one of them told me, “Wow, look at you, you’re famous!” To which I blushed and insisted that no, I’m really not. I mean, take a look at my current Twitter stats:

501 followers is so not even close to famous, at least not on Twitter. And yet, my Klout score isn’t half bad for someone with so few followers:

Klout attempts to assign a score to a social media user to gauge their actual influence. How these numbers are calculated is not really important for this article. You can visit their site to read all about it if you like. What is interesting, however, is what happens when you compare my score with those of a handful of the better known players in the internet marketing industry.

@dr_pete: 56
@joehall: 58
@ccheever: 43
@randfish: 68
@tomcritchlow: 58
@justinrbriggs: 50

That’s a pretty random sample grabbed from whoever happened to be sitting in my Twitter feed just now. Every single one of them has more than twice the followers I do, and yet in most cases my score isn’t too far behind theirs. What’s more, I somehow beat the founder of one of the hottest web properties out there! What the heck is going on?

(more…)

In 2007 Google began displaying “Universal Search” results . This was a big change in the way search results were delivered to viewers and it affected all web site owners that depend on Google traffic for their business.

What is Universal Search and why does it matter?
In the past, when a search term was entered into Google’s search field, the SE returned the web sites that best matched the query. So a particular site competed only with the other web sites vying for placement with the same keywords.
With the introduction of Universal Search, Google began displaying results that included other digital content such as video, images, news, books and blogs. Now the competition for valuable first page real estate grew much more fierce as websites not only had to compete with other web sites but also with digital media of all types.
Since Universal Search was introduced websites have a broader and more competitive playing field. To be successful with Universal Search, website owners need to broaden their reach to viewers using digital media such as Images, Video ( YouTube) , News ( Press Releases) , Social Media ( Facebook, Twitter) and Google Maps.
In the new era of Universal Search, business need to be proactive in using these opportunities to stay ahead of the competition.

Now that some time has passed since the October 28, 2010 rollout of Google Place Search, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at the data and see what really happened here. For some it was a great boon. For others it seemed to signal the end of days. How many times have we heard SEO is dead? We had a pretty good idea of how it affected our clients, but it was time to actually sit down and crunch the numbers.

We decided to look at the two months before and after the change – September and October, then November and December. We looked at the percentage of our clients’ chosen keywords that yielded a first page result and created averages across all clients to gauge the overall effect of the change.

Overall, our clients saw roughly a 5% boost in the number of page one rankings.

Hello SEO world. How are your New Year’s resolutions coming along? If you’re like me, you’ve either forgotten what you’ve set out to accomplish or have taken active steps to avoid them, such as canceling that gym membership. Anyhow, we’ve been away from the Link Love for a while and need to get back in the action! Maybe that would be a good goal to accomplish in 2011….

John’s:
Always interesting to hear who is complaining about Google or investigating them for anti-trust issues. This time, Italy Drops Inquiry into Google News. Specifically, the Italian Antitrust Authority has been looking into Google News complaints.  Read all about it!

Even though PageRank is meaningless, read up on an apparent Google Toolbar PageRank Update. Just because.

Becky’s:
It’s technically from a few weeks ago, but I really, really liked Ramit Sethis surprising lessons from AB testing. Especially this quote: “I learned that I can eke out an extra 5-15% from improving the subject line…or 500% from creating a better offer.”

I also got a kick out of How they landed that 6-digit sale with Google Analytics by Lunametrics. It’s short – nearly half of the text is a quote – and seemingly neglected by the masses, but it sparked a number of ideas over here that we’ve already begun putting into action in several ways throughout Page 1 Solutions.

Hello, Places listing managers. If you’re like me and you manage a multitude of Places listings, you are probably as frustrated as I am with the way that Google manages its local listing service. I think we can all agree that the current system is lacking a variety of features and capabilities. I think we can all agree that it’s time for Google to provide actual support for its product.

But for now, let’s put our frustrations aside and notice the changes that Google Places appears to be testing.

Custom Categories Gone
The first thing that I noticed was that my client’s listing was not allowing me to use or create custom categories. Instead of empty text boxes that would provide suggested categories as one typed (much like Google Instant), the only option I had was to utilize drop-down menus entitled “Category” and “Sub Category”.

We all know that Places listings benefit from having the maximum five categories filled out – as opposed to only one or two – but with the drop-down menus  they have removed many options.  Instead of having “Personal Injury Attorney,” “Tax Attorney”, “Family Law Attorney,” and a plethora of 20 other varieties of Attorney Specialties, they only had “Services – Attorneys.” To me, this is a huge disadvantage.

At the same time, I can see how it might eliminate Places listing managers that “game” the category section of their listing, literally “stuffing” each category with as many keywords and locations as possible (which as we all know is against their guidelines).

Verifying Your Listing via SMS Text
One of the most frustrating parts of Places management is the verification procedure. It’s not that it is really all that hard or complex, of course.  But for large SEO agencies or anyone managing a listing of a business remotely, it can oftentimes become a problem trying to receive the PIN from the client. They either throw the postcard away as spam, or they have an automated phone system that will not work for verification, or a variety of other difficulties.

When I saw the option to verify via SMS text message, I was immediately excited. Not so much for my clients – since they are mostly all automated systems or landlines – but more for everyone else that could really benefit from this. It may help a business that doesn’t utilize landlines, or online companies that use cell phones for business calls (that still would have an address).  Then I spoke with another SEO ninja about the capabilities of some newer landline phones that can send and receive text messages.

All of this results in one thing: just another option for Places managers to verify and optimize their business listing. And I think that is a great thing.

Viewing the Edit History for a Listing
I had just completed making edits to an unverified listing for one of my clients, and I had the postcard sent to their address for the PIN. After looking at the unverified listing again in Google Maps, I saw a small link that read “This place has unverified edits.” It then followed with “Show all edits” and a link that listed all of the updates in a lightbox.

Now we’re talking, Google. I think this capability of viewing previous changes is great, especially for anyone who has experienced a Google Places “Hacker” that makes a ton of changes to your listing.

I was able to find this information about the lack of custom categories, and the Google Help Forum does describe SMS in the different verification methods, but wasn’t able to find much on viewing previous edits for a listing.

What are your thoughts?

Is Google the only search engine I should target?
While Google does control the majority of the market and should be your top priority, in my opinion it is important to also keep an eye on your Yahoo/Bing results.

Does the age of my domain affect my SEO results?
It is generally believed that Google does give importance to domains that have been around for a while, whereas newer domains seem to take some time to gain credibility and climb up in the SERP rankings. If you haven’t purchased a domain yet, consider buying your domain for as long as you can, like 2-5 years. Google is said to look at how old the domain is and how long the domain is registered for.

Is it important to have a domain with strategic keyword phrases in it?
If possible, it is definitely preferable to have a domain name with strategic keyword phrases in it. If cost is factor or if the domain name is unavailable, try to use obtain a hyphenated version or a a domain name that has part of the keyword phrase that is being targeted.

If my website is off-line for a long period of time, can that hurt my search engine results?
If the SEs have difficulty accessing your site, if it’s slow to respond or responds with an error code for a sustained period, it can hurt your Search Engine results. If you know your site will be down for maintenance, you should set your server to respond with code 503, which informs the search engines that you’re aware of the situation and they should try again later.