Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

A few days ago, I received my invitation to Google Voice.  As is my standard operating procedure with new technology like this, I signed up first and figured out a business application after a few days. Well, I’ve had some time to think about this and I’ve compiled 5 ways of how you can use Google Voice for your own business.

Setup an “office” in another city
So when I moved to Chicago, I didn’t change my cell phone number, as most people already knew what it was and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of updating it and possibly losing people in the process. As a result, I still have a (586) Detroit area code for my cell phone number. With the advent of Google voice, now all of a sudden, I have a local number to give people, without having to change over my cell phone. If I wanted to, I could use this for marketing purposes and “setup shop” in cities where I don’t necessarily have a business office yet. If you are a small business, or a larger business trying to setup shop in a new market and want local credibility – why not check out Google Voice? It allows you to get a local number, but still maintain your homebase of operations.

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So I recently had some difficulty describing two types of paid search techniques. The first was in regards to a set of keyword terms which include a geographic location such as “Chicago dentist” or “New York plumber”. The second set of keywords I was trying to describe was a paid search campaign which used generic keywords “plumber” or “dentist”, but only showed those ads within a specific geographic area, such as Chicago or New York. Well, after some discussion with our head of media, he let me on two terms to describe both.

Geo-targeted: Which I was able to describe prior to this discussion. This is my latter example where a user enters a generic term and you show only the paid advertising for the geographic region they live in. For example, I’m searching in Chicago and I search for “pizza” or “dentist” and the mere fact that I reside within the targeted geographic area means the ad will display for me.

Geo-modified: Which I understood the technique, but just didn’t have the vocabulary to describe. This is the former technique whereby a user is explicit and says “Chicago dentist” or “New York plumber” and it doesn’t matter whether I am in Chicago or Denver. If I search for “Chicago dentist”, the geo-modified keyword phrase will cause that ad to be displayed.

And in case you missed it, Google decided to liven up the whole mix over the last few days by releasing geo-targeted results for natural search queries. So when a user queries things like “pizza” or “dentist”, Google returns the natural results, but also includes “relevant” local results. This is still to be determined as to how accurate these results are, but at least it’s a start. I’ve included a screen shot of what this looks like below:

I’m kind of against this technique as it trains users away from using longer queries to get more detailed information. I understand the logic that many of the queries they are using are localized queries: pizza, dry cleaning, chinese food, etc. however, I’m not 100% sure users will understand that when they need local information, they can just type in a one or two word query with no modifier. I think this might confuse Google’s experience a bit for any cases where Google either provides too much or too little information. If a user enters “Chinese restaurants“, they receive information about those restaurants, along with localized listings. If they use the phrase “traditional Chinese restaurants“, they do not receive any local listings. I know I’m giving Google a hard time about semantics and they will get better over time, but it’s the behavior they are reinforcing that I have an issue with. It should be “local modifier + term” yields local results – every time. If no local modifer is specified, it should yield non-local results – every time. By creating this muddy situation, they are diluting from the user experience, ever so slightly.

Any other cool targeting terms of features I should know about? Let me know if the comments.

Photo courtesy of timsnell.

So a while back I did a little experiment to see if I could rank #1 for a keyword phrase in one day. By creating a site that morning, doing a bit of SEO and link building throughout the day and by the end of the day have a ranking site in Google. And not just ranking, but ranking well. I had seen it done previously by others, but hadn’t done it myself. And with Google’s index updating more rapidly over the last year, I knew that it was feasible to have a site go from nothing to ranking in a matter of hours or days.

Now typically, we tell our clients that it will take some time to see results and depending on the competitive set and the keywords they want to rank “well” for, it can be anywhere from two weeks to two months to two years, in extreme cases. In this case, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just see what I could do.

So one morning I read a story which threw out a bunch of buzzwords like microblogging, crowdsourcing, web 2.0, etc. and I said, this is getting out of hand. So I did a quick URL search to see what domains were available, purchased one I liked, set up a hosting plan, and posted some files I threw together quickly. All within the span of a few hours.
That’s step 1.

Step 2 is that I set up Google analytics and Google webmaster tools to ensure that Google would both crawl the site that day, as well as give me statistics on what traffic I could generate over the course of that day.

Step 3 is that I blogged about it via my own blog, posted it on Twitter where it was RT’ed a few times, and posted it to Sphinn, Digg, Del.icio.us and a few other social bookmarking sites. And by the end of the day, VOILA! You can see the results below.

So if you are in crisis mode or you really drop the ball on some marketing effort, there is still some hope that you can make up for it by creating, optimizing, and launching a site all in one day*.

*DISCLAIMER – subject to competitive set, age of your website, amount of traffic on your website, your websites authority in your space, content to support your optimization, your knowledge of HTML, CSS, etc. etc. etc. Do not try this at home – results will vary

Earlier today, I had the privilege to speak at the Yarn Market News conference in a session entitled “Optimize your website for big results”. Thanks to everyone who attended. I thought it was really interesting to learn about your businesses and I hope I was able to provide some insights into your online and search marketing. In case you were interested in viewing the presentation again, I’ve provided it below.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me anytime.

This is a really interesting video from Peter Linsley, a Product Manager at Google Image Search. He explains some of the fundamental differences between regular Google searchers and Google Image searchers:

Google Image searchers look all over the page and are not necessarily looking for the #1 result. If they find an image in the lower right or left corner that interests them, they will click through. They also go very deep into the result set, looking for images.

He also goes into some detail as to how Google Image search actually works, in defining images as line art or photography, their sizes, and even eliminating duplicates. He finishes on some image search best practices:

• Focus on the user – provide context to your images with on-page text
• High quality images with EXIF data

Enjoy!

I’m glad Google is coming out and speaking directly to this. It all just seemed a little too nebulous as to what the definition of a “brand” is when it comes to one’s and zero’s:

And I’m sure a lot of brand managers out there breathed a sigh of relief knowing that they won’t have Google deciding if they have a brand or not

The first and most integral part of any SEO campaign is keyword research. I’ve outlined some of the tools that I’ve used and continue to use previously (AdGooroo, Google Keywords, Facebook Lexicon, Google Suggest, etc. ) so I won’t go into detail here, but once you’ve selected a preliminary keyword list, the next step is to evaluate how you and your competitors stack up against that list. Here’s where the traditional SWOT analysis comes in. In case you’re unfamiliar with SWOT, it stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s a great way to evaluate the value you bring to market, as well as your competitors. It also provides insights into possible issues with your campaign or future issues you may encounter. So let’s get into it.

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So I’m not sure how I missed this until now, but in November, Google launched a new keyword tool called Google Search-based keyword tool. Now you’re probably familiar with Google’s keyword suggestion tool, which looks at content in your website and suggests keywords based on the content it sees.

The Google Search-based keyword tool is a bit different in that it also provides a suggested URL to go with those keywords. It also ties directly into your Adwords account and suggests keywords you’re not already covering, which is a definite plus. The one new feature I really like is that you can browse keywords by category, which allows users to just dive into a category and come up with keywords to get an idea of what’s out there instead of banging your head against the wall trying to come up with keywords. Although it’s fairly high level, it’s still a good starting point.

The one issue I have is, why aren’t these tools combined? I had to really stop and think about what made these two different and I still don’t think I’m 100% confident I could tell the difference between them if someone asked. They even have a section on their website that says “How does the Search-based Keyword Tool differ from the Keyword Tool in AdWords?” So why not just combine all these into one great tool that everyone can use? You got me. Give them both a shot though and see if one or the other yields better results. Let me know if you know the difference, in the comments below.

So I was watching this video today about Google’s new search feature SearchWiki, which they launched yesterday, and had some thoughts. If you haven’t seen the video, it’s posted below:

I’ve watched the video a few times, and here are my initial thoughts.
[full disclosure: I do search engine marketing, among other things, for a living.]

Pros:

• It’s nice that you can modify search results to your own liking. I often see results, which I know are wrong or not applicable to me which I’d like to remove. Now I can do that.
• I like the annotation feature to provide the user a place to markup their results. It allows me to add metadata to the results I like or don’t like.
• I like the Digg-like comment function whereby users can vote comments up or down. (see image below).

Cons:

• The remove results feature. I understand why Google provided this feature, but there are two things inherently flawed with this:
  • It’s Google’s job to filter out non-applicable results, not the users.
  • What happens when that site adds new content? Will the user be notified about this? Isn’t the nature of the web inherently fluid?
• Google is supposed to have a minimalistic interface. By allowing users to annotate, modify, and remove listings within the interface, isn’t Google allowing users to destroy an otherwise minimalistic and functional interface, even if it is by their own doing and to Google’s detriment?
• Before you rearrange results or add notes, you see this message:
  “Please remember that your SearchWiki notes will be visible to other users, identified with your Google Account nickname.” Why does Google have to share personally identifiable information? If this is personal search, shouldn’t it be personal (i.e. for my eyes only)?

Judging by the “trackback” links on the Google blog, it sounds like a mix of both positive and negative reviews so far. I’ll give it to you, my readers, what do you think? Are you all warm and fuzzy about personalized search or is it just another feature Google offers which you may or may not try out?

Google added several new features to Analytics last week and they look extremely promising. I haven’t had a chance to test them out yet, as many of them are still unreleased or in private beta, however you can find more information here.

One of the most compelling features appears to be custom reports and motion charts. Motion charts allow for you to plot up to five variables at once, which can make for some extremely compelling and useful results. Here’s the video from Google below:

According to the Google Analytics blog:

Motion Charts will be available through a new “Visualize” button at the top of reports.

But there’s no mention of an exact time frame. I guess we should keep an eye out for when that magical “Visualize” button appears. If you see it before I do, let me know in the comments.