SEOMatrix LLC Blog: Your Daily Ethical Search Engine Marketing Treats

…Patrick Bateman had difficulty solidifying his request for a table at Dorsia in the 2000 film American Psycho. The exclusivity of the restaurant was never fully explained. Website conversion analysis can often be articulated in similar terms of psychological impact — webmasters are often smitten with large 1800 numbers that scream call me now, I am ready to take your valuable dollars! Both my practical and empirical experience on the internet has taught me that occasionally having an inconspicuous phone number actually gives you a higher conversion rate on phone calls (often times significantly higher). In fact, having a toll-free number occassionally decreases call volume in and of itself. A few websites with tough to find digits include:

1)    adwords.google.com
2)    www.seomoz.org
3)    www.amazon.com
4)    www.microsoft.com

Granted, these sites push a huge number of visitors through their pages on a daily basis, but the fact that the contact numbers are tough to find make some individuals all the hungrier to find them.

…sometimes inside Barnes and Noble I actually feel car sick — it’s not the Starbucks dragging me down — I think it may be more of an information overload type queeziness. Nowadays, I get a similar sense of awe when sifting through Google Books - it’s a neat invention. I tend to be more of a book skimmer or scanner type reader anyway, so Google Books is ideal for me. A few interesting notes on why:

1) You can store your favorite books to read at a later time
2) Books can be search on the basis of “full preview” or “limited preview” - my favorite prophetic Internet hypothesizing novel - A Logic Named Joe is available for limited preview.
3) You can share you book reviews and selections with others.
4) You can jot down notes under each title.

Overall, it assists me in organizing and storing information in one convenient location (and no, Google didn’t pay me to say that

What are the types of bots that Google sends out to the web?

Googlebot: crawl pages from our web index and our news index
Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for our mobile index
Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for our image index
Mediapartners-Google: crawls pages to determine AdSense content. We only use this bot to crawl your site if AdSense ads are displayed on your site.
Adsbot-Google: crawls pages to measure AdWords landing page quality. We only use this bot if you use Google AdWords to advertise your site.

He’ll often leave a little stamp in the weblogs like crawl-66-249-71-23.googlebot.com
Or, the image crawler will leave a little Googlebot-Image/1.0

To check to see how relatively frequent Google’s bots are coming around to your site, you can do the query in the Google search box cache:yoursite.com

%20 —- when you see one of those gremlins in the url string — it’s just the hex code for a space, which is not allowed in urls. Change those hexes to underscores or underlines and the problem is typically solved.

I would rate my ability to cook and prepare foods at, well, lets say extreme novice. In a perfect world I would be able to “replicate” pizza in a little microwave sized cubby-hole like in Star Trek. Despite how many times I click my heels – it hasn’t happened yet; so I’m forced to order takeout day after day from the same four to five mundane mediocre restaurants. Luckily, I can do a quick Google search for pizza in my area and bam – the ever knowing Google gives me ten additional pizza places I haven’t sampled yet. Not only does it tell me there are other options to where I can eat, it shows me where they are, and how to order some delicious pizza by listing their phone number right at the top of Google. This great feature known as Google Local has revolutionized my dining habits. With Google Local anyone can list their business, their contact information, and the location of the business on the ever-so-convenient Google Maps; you can even display photos of the store-front to boot!

Google Local isn’t just for hungry lack-luster cooks looking for a quick meal. It can be utilized for anything. Any type of business can be listed in Google Local, even businesses that don’t have websites (like small pizza places!). Have a flat tire? Google will tell you where you can get a new one. Desperately trying to find a new place to get your hair cut because your old stylist just can’t quite make you look like Brad Pitt no matter how many times you show him Mr. Pitt’s picture in GQ? Google will provide you with a plethora of different places right in your area.

Better yet, you don’t have to spend dozens of hours reading, researching, and learning the latest web development languages to optimize your site for the search engines. You can get your business listed at the top of the first page in Google for free by utilizing this new and rather easy feature.

If you are considering optimizing your business’ website; start by listing yourself on Google Local. It’s fast, free and surprisingly easy. All that you need is a [free] Google account and a computer. Click Here to sign up and get listed at the top of Google and find that pizza place that will actually put hotdogs on your pizza.

FAQ — what do you guys and Brian Ortiz at SEOMatrix do over there in 2008? — hit me with a few acronyms please —

1) organic search engine optimization (SEO / SEM)
2) website conversion rate improvement (CTR, CPM)
3) pay per click management and improvement (adwords PPC among others / quality score improvement)
4) social media optimization (SMO / SMM)
5) local search
6) reputation management and online identity management (OIM)

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…the ostensible reason for me not to expound on the term “canonicalization” is because Matt Cutts did a pretty decent job of it on his own, and wikipedia lends a hand as well. One area I wish to stress is the duplicate content issue as it relates to canonicalized urls. Using FTP clients I occassionally forget what an actual or intended home page url is – sometimes I upload index.htm files or index.html files without really giving it a second thought. I’ve also seen more than a few occassions where a given website has had up to six home pages saved on a server’s root directory- good for backup purposes in case of a hungry hi-tech gremlin — bad for search marketing and especially Googlebot — my recommendation is to perform a periodic scan of the root directory to see if there aren’t any duplicate home pages (or sub level pages for that matter) that may have been unitentionally saved with a different extension or page name. Google’s algorithm seems to be limiting the ranking possibilities of sites where they even suspect duplicate content to exist — a precaution well worth the time investment.

…not sure if it is worth the fight — but www.zodevdesign.com is toggling between #1 and #2 in Google for their keyword “architectural rendering.” Battling against the Wikis usually amounts to certain SEO death, but a steady stream of inbound linking, coupled with onsite optimization landed this target - www.seomatrix.com/robert/ was the particular optimizer on the project.

I admit it. I’m a stickler. No, actually, truth be told: I’m downright anal retentive about punctuation. And spelling. But, go ahead and start a sentence with the word “and”; I won’t mind. Hey, it’s a stylistic thing.

No, not a Stylistics thing - this isn’t ’70s radio, you know! This is the internet… and no, “internet” doesn’t need to be capitalized. Neither does “web.” So there.

But before I take this where I was intending to go, let me say a word or two about literacy. Our national literacy rate is higher than it’s ever been. In fact, those amusing Wikipedia folks had the following to say about it:

“The literacy rate of the United States is estimated to be 99.7%.”

Call me cynical, but I can’t believe it’s that high. Oh, it’s pretty high, that’s a given… but 99.7%? That just seems… Gee - is it just me or does everything look kinda rosy to you, too? Oh, wait - let me take off these glasses…

Huh… 99.7%. You’d never know it, given the regular butchery of the English language that seems to be rampant these days. Granted, literacy has not a thing to do with being able to carry on a conversation in proper English.

It’s time we got back to basics regarding how to speak and spell and punctuate. That said, on to what I intended to say in the first place:

The manager of my grocery store hates me.

You’re probably saying, “Oh, go on, Rita… I’m sure he doesn’t hate you. What, do you use too many coupons? Try to sneak through with 13 items in the 10-or-less-items aisle? That sort of thing? No, no, nothing that mundane. And anyway, it should be “10 or fewer items.” GRRR!

No, he hates me (yeah, he really does!) because I shop with a red Sharpie. Honest. Wanna see? It’s right here in my purse somewhere… down at the bottom… amid those dingy bits of fluff that used to be KleenexTM-brand facial tissues (I’m not gonna mess with brand-name misuse, no-siree-bob, not this chickie!)… I just saw it there this morning…

But I digress…

It really is in there; trust me. And when I go into the Big Y grocery store (there, maybe a nice plug will appease the snarling, balding fellow a smidgen), I go armed with my Big Y card in my pocket and my broad-tip red Sharpie gripped in one sweaty little paw. My left one; I am “left pawed,” after all.

And I go hunting. But not for bargains. No, no, my friend. Some things are more important than two-for-one specials on the family-size box of Rice Krispies.

It’s there… I know it is. I can feel it in my bones… and in the red ink that doubtless surges through my veins. It’s only a matter of time before I find it. Sometimes, there’s more than one… and those are the days when I absolutely bellow in punctuation frustration or slip into an editorial coma right smack in the middle of seven varieties of mushrooms. Or 47 different cold remedies.

For there, among all the oh-so-tempting specials, it lurks, taunting me. Perched innocuously beneath the garam masala, wedged between the dehydrated minced onions and the crushed rosemary… a hand-lettered 4×6-inch sign proudly proclaims: “Parsley compliments potatoes!”

Aaaarrrrghhhhhh!

It lashes out with its would-be death blow to my editorial sensibilities. Fortunately, I’m made of hardier stuff than it anticipates - and I’m armed with my trusty Sharpie. <cue the blaring trumpets>

Don’t get me wrong. I’m delighted that the parsley has such splendid things to say about the potatoes (”That’s a lovely red skin you’re wearing,” I imagine one such compliment might be; yet another, “My, what firm but tender flesh you have…”). However, I’m fairly certain that what that sign was meant to convey is that parsley goes well with - complements - potatoes. That’s complements, with an E, not an I.

Oh, speaking of Es and Is… Do you know how Old MacDonald spells farm? That’s right: E-I-E-I-O.

Seriously, though… your fourth-grade teacher was right: Correct spelling and punctuation are absolutely key to effective communication! Think about it: If your website is riddled with spelling, syntax and punctuation errors, that reflects badly on your company. Your website represents you… shouldn’t it depict you in the best-possible light? Of course! That’s why - now more than ever - spelling counts.

– a peripheral or alternative definition could be — ethical search engine marketing is about unearthing the clients’ goals and understanding how to most efficiently achieve them.