Just returned from the 2009 PubCon Conference in Las Vegas.  One of the sessions I attended was about the changes that are being seen in people’s online search behavior. I’ve included some notes below so that you may take the search trends into account as you roll out your 2010 Internet Marketing Strategy.

• YouTube is now the second most searched website. 
  Been thinking of making videos?  Now seems to be the time to get moving on that.
• Twitter and Facebook appear in the top 10 list of most searched websites.
  Do you need to ramp up activity on these websites?
• Searches on Twitter and Facebook are replacing searches on Google. Twitter and Facebook searches reach much more targeted audiences.
  Traditionally,  ”getting found” involved SEO of your website. SEO of your website is still needed as Google remains the most searched search engine, however, now searches are being done on interactions at the social networking websites, so, you want to augment SEO at your website with your social networking interactions. Make sure that you are active at Twitter and Facebook — and you use your keyword terms in your profiles and posts so that you can get found for the terms that are relevant to your business.
• Will changes in search behavior adversely affect Google?
  • Probably not as Google has everyone else’s data – except Facebook’s.
  • And it appears that Google is converting itself into a social networking website. See google.com/experimental Google Social Search for a taste of the new functionality being tested.
• Facebook is currently not sharing data with Google.
  Develop a separate strategy for Facebook interactions as those will not appear in the Google search results.
• Panelists conclude that Google’s Friend Connect is not effective and Facebook’s Fan utility is effective.
  Consider inviting readers/followers to become a Fan of yours. Add the Become a Fan link to your website as well as your Facebook profile.
• The popularity of digg, del.icio.us, reddit,  and stumbleupon has declined as the results of good positioning in these produces spikes in traffic, but, not long-term gains in followers/readership. Activities at Twitter and Facebook reach a much more targeted audience and tend to build relationships which result in long-term gains.

Bottom line: Become more active in Facebook and Twitter. Engage like-minded social networkers in conversations and focus on building relationships. <– Back to basics.

Notes taken 11/12/09 at the Search Bloggers: What’s Hot and Trending session.

The two most important things that search engines look for when determining how to rank your website in their search engine results pages (SERPs) are content and backlinks. Volume of content and quantity of backlinks count, but, the quality of the content and the backlinks count even more.  

Content
There should be plenty of content at your website that talks about all aspects of your products and services. “How to…” and “Top 5 Tips for…” articles/posts recieve particular attention, so, include plenty of those in your website. Content should be added frequently, so, sit down and write up a list of topics that you can write about. Then add an article/post about one of those topics as often as you can. Adding content is a way of telling the search engines that the website is current (unlike those that you have seen that were created 4 years ago and nothing has changed, including the copyright date).

Backlinks
Backlinks are the links TO your website. To find out who is linking to your website, go to Google and Yahoo and type link:www.yourwebsite.com -site:yourwebsite.com into the search box. A list of websites that link to your website will display – excluding the links within your own website (-site:yourwebsite.com). You need to use both Google and Yahoo because they use different parameters, so, will yield similar, but different results.

Now, do the same search using the website address of a website that is listed above yours in the SERPs (link:www.competitor.com -site:competitor.com). Research the websites that link to that website to determine whether you want to be linked to by those websites. Are they quality websites?=high value. Link farms?=low value. For the websites that you would like to link to yours, do what it takes to get those websites to link to you as well.

Tips

1. To test which websites link to a particular page in your website, type link:www.yourwebsite.com/specificpage.html -site:yourwebsite.com in the search box.
2. A link to your website from a .edu trumps a link from a .com

1. Leaving older versions of your web pages on the server
   The search engines send programs to review your website. A program thinks that ‘aboutus.html’, ‘aboutus-old.html’, and ‘aboutus-save.html’ are 3 different files. This looks like duplicate content and can cause your website to descend in the search engine ranks. (Learn more about duplicate content and SEO.) Ask your web developer how they are archiving your pages. Confirm with them that the obsoleted (and previous versions of your) Web pages are on a local machine and not at your website nor at a development, staging, or test website. 
    
2. Maintaining your own website after SEO work
   I am seeing this more and more during these difficult economic times and want to highlight how damaging this is to your SEO efforts. Let’s say that last year, you had SEO work done by a professional. This year, money is tight so you want an employee to maintain your website. Now you have a non-SEO-trained person updating your website.  Due to their inexperience, they will inadvertently unravel the complex connections your SEO professional put into place last year, and gains that were achieved after the SEO project will begin to disappear.One option is to send the employee to SEO training. With that you end up spending the money you intended to save.  Plus, SEO standards are constantly changing, so you will need to continue sending that employee to training – and now the employee is truly distracted from his/her core competency.

   Set yourself up for success! An SEO professional knows what the search engines are looking for. They work more efficiently, and, in the end, will cost you less.

Last night, I attended a SEMNE (Search Engine Marketing New England) event in Peabody, MA. Jill Whalen, co-founder of SEMNE and CEO of High Rankings, presented “Determining the SEO Health of Your Website.” Although I have experience and successes doing organic search engine optimization for my clients, I was hoping to pick up a nugget or two, and, make new connections by networking with other professionals. I scored on both counts!

Jill outlined the  process that she uses when auditing a website for search engine worthiness; 5 or 6 major areas. Then, she discussed each of the areas in detail. That was followed by live audits of several websites managed by people in the audience.

Common SEO mistakes Jill sees are that companies: 

1. Choose too broad keyword terms
2. Create web pages that are simply not link-worthy
3. Create menu structures that are unreadable by the search engines
4. Hide content
5. Write content that does not include the appropriate keyword terms for the given page
6. Use poor quality analytics tools

One interesting tool that I will check into in more detail later is Google’s KeywordToolExternal. Jill has stopped using WordTracker and Keyword Discovery and now uses Google’s keyword tool exclusively. I have always used WordTracker, so, I look forward to learning more about Google’s tool. As a quick look-see, this morning I used KeywordToolExternal to review my website.  It was very revealing to see what Google is suggesting for keywords. The keyword terms that I most want to be found with today  - are not on the list.  Hummm got some work there.  

Another tool that Jill recommended is a Firefox plugin called KGen. I installed that this morning, took a quick look, and will play with it a while in order to determine how it can enhance my SEO efforts.

Also mentioned were: Google’s text cache, site operator, and Analytics, as well as http header checks(http://www.randycullom.com/headerchecker.php).

Recommendations made by Jill:

1. Optimize a single page for three keyword phrases (not just one)
2. Create Titles Tags of 10 – 12 words
3. Use CSS-based pull-down menus (not JavaScript-based)
4. Use 301 redirects (and not 302’s)

All in all an informative presentation. Thanks Jill.

What tools are you using? Have any tips for SEO?