Search Marketing
Lab Report
Issue #31, June 2009

1. Welcome!
2. Feature: 7 Design Tips that Score Big with Google
3. Highlights from the Search Marketing Lab
4. Frequently Asked Questions... and Answers
5. Strategies from a Real-Life Success Story: FatBrainToys.com
6. Final thoughts

1. Welcome!

Hello and welcome to the March Search Marketing Lab Report!

This month in our news and highlights we'll introduce you to Bing, Microsoft's new search engine (but don't let Bill Gates hear you call it that -- he prefers the term, "decision engine"), and we'll give you some tips on how to optimize your site for this latest challenger in the ongoing search engine wars.

We'll also tell you about some changes Google has made to its services (some great, others not so good) and offer you some sweet relief if your site was just kicked out of Google's listings and you're biting your nails waiting to discover when -- and if! -- your site will ever reappear in Google's search results.

Plus, we'll show you how Mark Carson of FatBrainToys.com has used paid search to help his company grow a $600 investment into a thriving Internet business that makes over 12,000 sales and gets 200,000 unique visitors a month. And that's during the off season!

First, however, let's take a look at your site design. Great design is important for winning over your human visitors. But did you know that it's equally important to make the search engines love you?

Read on to learn more...

2. Feature: 7 Design Tips that Score Big with Google

Good site design is essential to the success of your online business. If you make it easy for people to find exactly what they're looking for on your site, you'll get more sales. It's that simple.

... But did you know a well-designed site can also boost your chances of getting a top ranking with Google and the other search engines?

The fact is, the search engine spiders love a well-designed site just as much as your human visitors do -- and they hate a poorly designed site even more. And when the search engines hate your site, you can kiss goodbye any free traffic you've been hoping to get from them!

So if you want to score big with the spiders -- and get a top ranking with Google and the other search engines -- make sure you following seven design rules...

1. Your site shouldn't be more than three clicks deep!

The bigger and more content-rich your site is, the more the search engine spiders will love it. However, if you want the spiders to index your entire site make sure all of your pages are never more than three clicks away from your home page.

That's because spiders discover the deeper pages within your site by following links. But they don't always crawl every single link they come across -- and they place way more importance on pages that are closer to your home page as opposed to those that are farther away. So the deeper a page is buried in your site, the greater the chance that the spiders won't bother to index it.

2. Make sure your most important pages are closest to the "top" of your site

Search engine spiders assume that the pages closest to your home page are the most important (after the homepage itself, that is). That's because most backlinks are directed to a site's homepage. The closer a page is to the homepage, the more it will benefit from the "inbound link power" from all those backlinks -- and the higher it will rank in the search engine results.

And of course, the more pages you have at the top of Google's results, the most visitors you will get.

3. Build up your internal linking structure

The more you link from one page to another within your site, the more you encourage the search engine spiders to crawl your entire site, and the more you spread the inbound link wealth around.

Your internal links also tell the search engines which pages on your site are most important, and they will rank them accordingly. When one of your internal pages rises up the search engine ranks, your entire site benefits!

Here's an example of how to create an internal linking structure...

Say you sell fitness equipment. On your homepage, you link to an article that describes the different types of fitness equipment. Every mention of a specific kind of equipment should include a link that leads to a sales page for that kind of equipment -- so rowing machines leads to the rowing machine sales page, treadmills leads to the treadmills sales page, and ellipticals leads to the ellipticals sales page.

Then, on each of those sales pages you could have a piece of text that says, "To learn more about our different kinds of equipment, click on the following: rowing machine benefits treadmill benefits elliptical benefits ."

When you click on any of these links, you are taken to an article that offers an in-depth description of the health benefits of using that kind of equipment. And every mention of that equipment will then link back to the salespage for that equipment. Before you know it, every page of your site will include links to many other pages on your site, creating dozens of different pathways for the search engine spiders to explore. Not only will the spiders love you for it, your human visitors will also thank you for all the useful information you've given them.

One important note: Once you have built up your internal linking structure, make sure all those links work! Whenever you make changes to your site, you'll need to doublecheck all the links on the pages you've changed and make sure they're not broken.

4. Include an XML sitemap

An XML sitemap is a a bit of code you can add to your site which makes it easier for the spiders to crawl every page of your site. It also encourages the search engine spiders to crawl your site faster whenever you make changes to it.

XML sitemaps are easy to create. Simply go to XML-sitemaps.com and follow the instructions then download the sitemap file and put it in the "public_HTML/" folder on your site.

HOWEVER... don't think an XML sitemap makes a good substitute to well-planned navigation and a comprehensive internal linking structure! An XML sitemap is simply a handy tool to ensure the spiders regularly come to crawl your site. But if you want them to understand which pages on your site are the most meaningful and deserve the highest ranking with the search engines, you'll have to let your navigation and your internal links do the job.

5. Use keywords for your navigation buttons

The buttons in your navigation menu are probably the most important links in your entire site. They exist in the same place on every page in your site and are the links that receive the most clicks as your visitors explore your site.

... So if you're not using your best keywords on those popular links, now's the time to start!

Let's go back to that fitness equipment example. Your first instinct might be to label the links in your navigation menu like so: "Home equipment -- Gym Equipment -- Travel Equipment." But if nobody is searching the terms "home equipment," "gym equipment," or "travel equipment" then you're losing out on a valuable source of keyword traction.

If, on the other hand, lots people are searching the terms "Rowing machines," "Treadmills," and "Ellipticals" then it makes far more sense to use those as the main buttons on your navigation menu. Not only will you get the added boost of featuring great keywords prominently on every page of your site, you'll also make it easier for your human visitors to find what they're looking for.

By the way, this rule also works for blog categories. The search engines place a lot of emphasis on your category links so it's a good idea to try to use keywords in your category labels.

Just make sure those links are all written in HTML. Which brings us to our next point...

6. Beware Flash and JavaScript!

In recent years, Google has gotten better at indexing Flash and Javascript. But the search engines still prefer good old fashioned HTML-based text, so try to keep your use of Flash and JavaScript to an absolute minimum. Above all, do not include a fancy splash page that prevents the search engine spiders -- and your human users -- from seeing your site right away.

Another thing to be wary of is drop-down menus that are created using JavaScript. That in itself isn't so bad, but if the links themselves in the dropdown menus are in JavaScript instead of HTML then the search engines might not be able to follow them, and that would make it hard for them to index the rest of your site.

Here's a quick way to find out if your links are spider-friendly -- view the source code of your site and doublecheck that your links are all written in HTML. They should look like this:

<a href="xxxx"></a>

If they do, you're fine. If not, you might want to make some changes -- soon!

7. Don't overlook your footer!

Right now you might be having a hard time figuring out how you can possibly limit your site to being only three clicks deep (with all pages being only three clicks away from your home page). Here's a very useful tip: make the most of your footers!

The footer is the very bottom of your page, usually right above your copyright information. It should be the same on every page on your site, which means that any links you place in your footer will have a lot of traction with the search engine spiders. This is an excellent place to link to important keyword-rich articles in order to build up your site's content and internal linking structure.

For example, at the bottom of our Internetmarketing.com site, you will see the following links:

If you click on the link, "Start an Internet Business" you will be taken to an article that has been optimized for that keyword. At the top of that article you will see more links leading to different articles that have been optimized for similar keyword:

This is an easy and effective way to make sure your site has many different keyword-optimized web pages just a click or two away from your homepage. And the best part is, you didn't have to use any of your important navigation menu links to make it happen.

So those are our top seven rules for search-engine friendly site design. If you're not following any of them, maybe it's time to make some changes to your site. You're guaranteed to see an improvement in your search rankings if you do!

In the meantime, if you're curious to discover what the search engines "see" when they crawl your site, here's a handy "search engine simulator" for you to try out. It will show you exactly how your site appears to a search engine spider and can help you identify and fix the blind spots on your site so that the search engines can more easily index all your web pages.

After all, the more pages you have sitting near the top of Google's listings, the greater your visitor count will be -- and the more sales you'll end up making!

If you'd like to get a better understanding of what good navigation is -- and isn't -- we strongly recommend that you check out the examples of really BAD navigation over at: www.webpagesthatsuck.com.

(Just remember, don't do what they do!)

3. Highlights from the Search Marketing Lab

Microsoft launches Bing – and it outperforms Yahoo???


On June 3rd Microsoft officially launched Bing, its latest challenger in the search engine wars. But don't call Bing a "search engine" -- Microsoft prefers the term "decision engine" and claims that the greater detail Bing provides in its search results will help people make better, more informed decisions.

Well, it looks like some people bought their argument--initially, at least. According to StatCounter.com, the day after Bing launched it managed to score 5.56% of the global market share, outperforming Yahoo. And Hitwise claims that in the UK, Bing has continued to outperform Yahoo since its launch.

Not only that -- visitors are spending an average of 8 1/2 minutes on the site, which suggests they're actually using the search engine, not just paying it a quick visit to satisfy their curiousity.

However, after the buzz following the initial launch, Bing's global market share dropped back below Yahoo's and has been hovering between 2% and 4% -- not exactly the Google toppler Microsoft was hoping for. (To put this in perspective, Google currently has about 77% of the world's market share.)

Some analysts are speculating that Microsoft has another colossal flop on its hands. But the early stats show that Bing is outperfoming Microsoft's older search offerings, Live.com and MSNsearch.com, and their $80 million advertising campaign to spread the word about Bing isn't off the ground yet.

And even though Bing is lagging behind Google and Yahoo, it has continued to steal market share from both of them. In the week ending June 6th, Google's share decreased from 78.68% to 77.94% and Yahoo dropped from 11.46% to 10.76%.

So don't start hammering any nails in the coffin yet. We still think that Bing is worth checking out, especially since the search engine is currently playing much nicer with webmasters than Google or Yahoo typically does.

If your site is brand new, you probably stand a better chance getting it indexed faster on Bing than on Google, so to start getting some high PageRank links you might want to focus your optimization on Bing first. Then, once you're ranked well in Bing's listings you can tweak your optimization efforts to meet Google's more stringent requirements.

(More about that next... so keep reading!)

Bada Bing, Bada Boom! Five easy tips on how to optimize your site for Bing

If you would like to get great rankings with one of the Internet's top search engines, the time to strike is NOW. In the first couple of weeks since its launch, Bing has proven itself to be very amenable to webmasters' optimization efforts -- which means that with a little tweaking you can get your site listed at the top of Bing's search results right away. And if Microsoft's $80 million ad campaign succeeds in driving hordes of visitors to its new "decision engine," that could mean a rush of traffic to your site!

Here are the top five tips on how to get Bing to notice you:

1. The older, the better. Bing places a lot of emphasis on the age of a domain. So if you're just starting out you might consider buying an older domain in order to get your site a higher ranking.
   
   
2. Titles are important. Bing seems to place a lot more emphasis on title tags than Google does. So make sure you use your best keywords in the title tags of every page on your site!
   
   
3. Text is terrific. For Google and Yahoo, the amount of text you have on a web page doesn't play a huge role. Not so with Bing, which seems to place a higher value on pages that have at least 300 words.
   
   
4. Outbound links are okay. Google has always seemed to frown on the number of outbound links you have on a page. But Bing actually seems to like them -- for the moment, at least.
   
   
5. Backlinks are even better! If you're frustrated because all of your efforts to get links pointing to your site haven't gotten you anywhere with Google, then good news! When it comes to backlinks, Bing's attitude seems to "the more, the merrier" -- as long as the links are coming from relevant sites, of course.

So there you have it -- five easy optimization tips to help you score a good ranking with Bing. Give them a try and let us know how they work for you. We're curious to discover how much actual traffic Bing ends up sending you!

What you need to know about the new Google Adwords Interface

After a relatively short Beta run, Google has released a new interface for Adwords -- and some analysts are saying that the search giant might have jumped the gun.

Though the new Adwords interface is faster to navigate and makes it easier for you to get an idea of what's happening in your campaigns and ad groups, initial reports coming in from long-time users suggest that the new interface is confusing and takes some time getting used to, and there are still a number of annoying bugs to deal with.

Here's a brief overview of some of the most important changes:

If so, here's something you'll love: You no longer have to wait weeks wondering if Google has reviewed your site yet.

Now, if you send a reconsideration request through Google Webmaster Tools, you'll now get an email letting you know when your request has been reviewed.

Look for an email with the subject line, "We've processed your reconsideration request for [yourwebsite.com]." You'll probably receive it within a few days or weeks of submitting your request. If your site doesn't reappear in Google's listings a few days later, your site is probably still violating Google's guidelines and needs more optimization work.

What exactly you're doing wrong, you might not know -- but at least you'll be certain that Google has reviewed your site and it's not just wasting away at the bottom of someone's "to-do" list!

Google now offers local business owners access to valuable data

If you own a brick-and-mortar business and have it listed in Google's local listings (such as Google Maps), here is something you NEED to know: Google has now added a reporting dashboard to its Local Business Center -- and the available data can help you dramatically boost your profits!

In case you didn't already know, if you sign up to use Google's Local Business Center you can customize your listing by including text that describes your products and your unique selling proposition... photos of your products or storefront... information about your business hours... coupons your visitors can print out and use at your store... as well as anything else that will help you stand out from the competition.

And now, thanks to the new reporting dashboard Google has added to the Local Business Center, you have access to information about your business that you've never had before. You'll find data on who's searching for you in Google, what zip code or postal code they're in, what keywords they're using to find you, and what information they're checking out in your listing most often.

For example, if you have a Spanish restaurant, maybe you'll discover that far more people are typing in "Spanish paella restaurant" to find your listing, as opposed to "Spanish tapas bar." In that case, you'll probably want to tweak your listing to place more emphasis on your paella, since that's what people are most interested in.

Google's Local Business Center is free to use, so if you want to know more about how your customers are using the Internet to find you, you really have to check it out.

4. Frequently Asked Questions... and Answers

One of the most important business decisions you ever make is choosing a domain name for your business. You need something keyword-rich, memorable, and informative, targeted to your niche market. But do you go for something local or international? Our resident SEO genius, Geoff D., shows forum member Joy how to mine her statistics for the answer.

Question:

We run a tourism business with a very strong conservation focus on wildlife in the Margaret River wine region of Western Australia.

We currently have a site that offers tourism accommodation as well as conservation education. We don't think it's as effective as it could be, so we're planning to move all of the conservation information over to a brand new site, where we can ask for donations to help our work.

In choosing a name for the new site, should we choose a geographical name that shows where we are -- Western Australian wildlife, Australian conservation, Aussie wildlife, Margaret River wildlife...

Or use a more generic name, like Save Wildlife or Adopt Wildlife?

We think that the global approach might be best, as animals from another country are always more interesting than your own!

We have attached our statistics that show where our guests come from.

Answer:

Your URL should definitely reflect the subject of your site, and include a keyword that people can remember. That's the easy part.

As to whether or not you include your geographical location, it depends on your market. You already have traffic coming to your current site, so you have a source of fresh, relevant statistics. That's the best way to make this decision -- based on actual numbers and not guesses.

From the statistics you attached about visitors to your current site, I can see that out of almost 1,000 visitors, over 800 of them are from Australia -- it works out to about 82%.

So rather than putting the word "Australia" in your URL, it would probably be better to use an URL like WildlifeConservation.au, or even MargaretRiverConservation.au. Compare that with a URL geared to Americans or Europeans, such as AustralianWildlifeConservation.com.

It's so important to double-check your gut feelings against what the numbers are telling you. For example, maybe you're more interested in animals from other countries, but it doesn't look like it works out that way for most of your traffic! With such a high proportion of Australian visitors, it seems likely that you'll have much more success by marketing to them than you would by trying to capture an uninterested American or European market.

To find the actual keywords for your domain name, you can use the free Google Keyword Tool and search under Australia. This tool gives you stats for different countries, so it's really handy when you're looking for a domain aimed at a specific area.

5. Strategies from a Real-Life Success Story: FatBrainToys.com

When web designer Mark Carson and his wife launched FatBrainToys.com in 2003, their sole investment was $600 in inventory. Since then all they've seen are seriously "fat" profits!

Now FatBrainToys.com sees up to 12,000 orders in a MONTH -- thanks to Mark's genius SEO strategies that continue to drive fresh, targeted traffic to his site -- AND keep his loyal customers coming back for more.

We recently spoke to Mark Carson about his success with sponsored search and how he has managed to turn "child's play" into a thriving business on the Web.

We started by asking Mark to tell us about his company and the products it sells:

FatBrainToys.com is a company dedicated to providing families with the types of toys that provide fun and learning experiences without dumbing down how kids play.

Our philosophy is simple -- so simple in fact that we made it our company tag line: "Smarter Toys = Smarter Kids.

We don't sell the types of toys that you might see on the shelves of your local big box store. In other words, we don't sell ALL the toys you can get anywhere else... just the best ones!

But the toy market is so incredibly competitive! We wanted to know how Mark has managed to go head-to-head with giants like Walmart and ToysRUs and avoid getting crushed. As Mark explained to us, the secret is having a Unique Sales Proposition that makes your business really stand out from the competition.

In the toy world, there are two distinct types of products, "Mass" and "Specialty. While the Walmarts, Targets, and ToysRUs stores of the world general focus on Mass products, we try to seek out Specialty toys, games, and gifts.

The specialty products we seek out are more fundamental, are of higher quality, and as a result, higher priced. But we feel very strongly that the slightly higher price is more than worth it because of the benefits they offer to our customers.

Frank admits that even with his USP, competition is still fierce.

The 800-pound gorillas... they definitely take their piece of the pie! But thanks to the Internet, the barrier to entry for new players is not as huge as it would be otherwise... especially if you offer your customers something unique they can't just grab off the shelves at Walmart.

And Mark's customers seem to agree, as his company's gross revenue has DOUBLED every year it's been in business!

Mark attributes much of his success to the excellent results he gets with his sponsored search campaigns. His site gets 200,000 unique visitors a month in the off-season (and often twice or three times that much during the holiday season!) and he says that a significant percentage of those visitors are sent to his site from paid search ads.

I'd say, without a doubt, that our work with sponsored search plays a major role in directing quality traffic our way.

We spend significant time and money on sponsored search advertising with ALL the major search engines. Most of our pay-per-click spending goes to Google AdWords, but we also advertise on Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter.

The real challenge with sponsored search is to attract quality, targeted traffic to your website -- not just click-throughs, but customers. According to Mark, the key to paid search success is making your ads as specific as possible -- and using them to target a very specific audience.

Our goal with any search strategy is to target not just a particular customer, but a particular customer looking for a particular toy.

If you search online for any of our key products -- Wedgits, Lincoln Logs, Melissa & Doug items, Geomag, Erector Sets -- you’ll find Fat Brain Toys as one of the prime options available to Web consumers.

Because we sell unique types of toys, we believe our customers are searching for them by name in many cases. That's how we've ended up targeting our campaigns -- focusing on specific items.

And it's no small task, either -- Mark's company carries over 3,500 products, and he tries to run sponsored search campaigns for all 3,500 of them!

Mark cautions new site owners to be careful when they start out with paid search, however, and emphasizes the need to always keep track of how much you're spending on your ads compared to how much business they're generating.

The benchmark for our PPC success, at the campaign and keyword level, is how much profit we make. We've done the calculations to figure out what a customer is worth to us, and if the costs go above that, then we have to go back to work on the campaign.

If a campaign gets too expensive, or doesn't convert at all, then we start tweaking our bids to see if we can get better placement. We continue adjusting until we either make it profitable... or we cut it away.

Still, Mark definitely believes the effort is worth it!

It's a challenging process when you're dealing with thousands of search terms, but we've managed to have good success overall.

... I think the development of sponsored search has really allowed e-commerce companies to control their own destiny.

Until it came along, an e-commerce company could have been the best company in the world, but they would have no way to expose their company to their ideal audience... at least not without immense expense and time.

As a tip to new site owners, Mark suggests you set aside your preconceptions about what will and won't work with your paid search campaigns and let the results do the talking.

I've found many, many good keywords that I initially dismissed, but ended up working out to a great return on my investment.

You have to have patience, and be willing to test and rework your campaigns again and again before they finally work. And then keep testing them!

If you're interested in trying sponsored listings with your business, spend some serious time on keywords research to make your investment worthwhile. Keep trying new keywords to see which ones convert best, and then invest more money into the ones that promise you a good return.


6. Final thoughts

We hope you're fired up with all the new search marketing tools and strategies you can check out this month!

To start with, take a close look at your site design. Do you think it's doing a good job of helping the search engine spiders index your site? One way to make sure is checking out the "spider's-eye view" of your site with this handy free "spider simulator."

Once you think your site design is up to snuff, go to Bing and check to see where your site ranks in its search results. Are you in the first or second page of results? If yes, cool! Keep a careful eye on your analytics to see how much traffic Bing is actually sending you.

And if you aren't already running sponsored search campaigns with Google Adwords or its competitors, now is the time to start! As Mark Carson of FatBrainToys.com points out, just make sure you keep a careful eye on how much you're spending and what kind of return you're getting on your investment.

Finally, if you have a local business be sure to check out Google's Local Business Center! Google's new reporting features will give you some extremely valuable information you can use to grow your business.

As always, thanks for reading. And don't forget to check out the rest of the site for more SEO wisdom! There's tons of it there and we encourage you to take advantage of it.

And please let us know what you think. If you have any questions or comments you can contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Until next month!

The Internet Marketing Center Team