Jamie O’Donnell of SEO-PR interviews Matt Malden, CEO of Yield Software and an exhibitor at last month’s SES San Francisco 2010.  Here’s a synopsys of Jamie’s reporting:

Yield Software’s Yield Web Marketing Suite handles three aspects of automated web marketing. It has a pay-per-click (PPC) bid management module that includes spending on the three major search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo.  Second, the Yield Web Marketing Suite offers automated SEO or natural search engine optimization. Using the Yield Web Marketing Suite, Web marketers can get higher organic search rankings for their important keywords and learn how to improve their landing pages, link building, on-page and off-page optimization. Finally, the Yield Web Marketing Suite offers Web marketers a landing page optimization module. Using Yield, marketers can conduct complex multivariate testing of landing pages, using a visual drag and drop interface to automatically implement recommendations.

Yield Software is great for advertisers who want to be more effective in the search space, particularly medium and large-sized companies. Yield Software has also been adopted by digital and interactive media agencies that are conducting bid management, natural search optimization and email campaigns in order to help them generate better search marketing results.

Yield Software empowers any organization in the world to attract high-value customers at the lowest cost. Using advanced algorithms and techniques, the Yield Web Marketing Suite optimizes internet marketing expenditures, attracts visitors to a web site and tunes web page content to have the greatest impact.

For more information about exhibiting at SES, please visit: http://searchenginestrategies.com

…EIGHT Separate Ways

Google “Everything” (also referred to as “blended search results”, or “universal search”) provides companies with several opportunities to appear on the first page of natural search results. The days of search results pages (SRPs) being limited to text links are ancient history. SRPs now includes a variety of results, from tweets to images and videos. We encourage you not to limit yourself to just one link presence on the first page, but to go for as many listings as possible. The larger your presence on that first page, the better your click-through rate (CTR) and brand recall will be.

We’ve compiled a list of eight opportunities for landing on page one of SRPs for your keywords that are relevant to most business types, together with a “Cliff’s Notes” version of key points on how to optimize each of them.

1. Organic Search Text Link. This is the traditional listing we think of that used to be the sole content of SRPs on Google. Key optimization points here include:

• Have a properly configured page (good page title, etc.) with relevant and original content related to your target keywords.
• Attain high quality, relevant links from authoritative sources for your keywords with a variety of relevant inbound link text.
• Have a URL that is short and relevant to your business name and keywords.
• To bolster your CTR, make sure your page title is less than 64 characters and includes your keywords at the beginning and your meta description tag is succinct and also includes your keywords at the beginning. Both your page title and meta description tag should be unique. For more on Google’s page title and meta description recommendations read here.

2. Paid Search Ad. These are the traditional AdWords text ads that appear at the very top and down the far right-hand side of the results. To optimize your quality score and CTR you can:

• Choose your keywords wisely – it’s actually good to double up. If you rank well for a keyword in natural search or get natural search traffic for a keyword, you can actually increase traffic and brand recall for that term by also having a paid search ad appear for it.
• To have a strong CTR, write ad copy that is highly relevant. This requires very tight ad group organization so you can get highlights in 2 or more lines of your ad copy by incorporating the keywords from your ad group directly into your ad copy in more than one location.
• Offer something unique from the competition in your ad copy.
• Have your ad take up as much space as possible on the page. Take advantage of location display, site links and product feed links to get more “free” lines of space to have your ad stand out.

3. Local 10-Pack Listing. The 10-pack is the box within the set of natural search results that includes a map and a listing of 10 local businesses. When the local 10-pack appears, it takes up a monster amount of space. In order to make your way into the 10-pack, you can:

• Claim your business listing on Google local. Also make sure your listing is accurately submitted to Localeze and InfoUSA.
• Complete all of your business information on Google local – every single field. When categorizing your business be sure to focus on search queries searchers are likely to use.
• Include images of your business with your local listing.
• Get reviews. Reach out to customers and offer incentives for them to post reviews.
• On your website itself be sure to include your local phone number and business address across your pages.
• Get inbound links to your site from local authorities and location oriented sites, such as local news organizations or local business associations.
• Submit a Geo Sitemap to Google – instructions can be found here. There’s also a great free tool that helps you create a Geo Sitemap.
• For more information on the Google 10-Pack, check out our blog post.

4. An Image. Images can also appear in the blended search results. In order to have your images appear here you can:

• Optimize your image alt attributes to include your target keywords.
• Optimize your image file name with your keywords. Be sure to separate the keywords in the file name using dashes.
• Optimize your image title tag, but this one doesn’t carry as much weight.
• Ensure the text surrounding the image on your page is relevant.
• If possible – try some inbound links, or even internal links with descriptive anchor text to further re-enforce your relevancy.
• Avoid going overboard on the number of images on any page, ensure the number of images is appropriate for the page content size.
• Include the word “picture” or “image” along with your keywords – these are very popular search terms.
• Make sure the image links to your website.

5. A Video. I’ve seen some search queries generate up to eight video listings on the first page of the results – what an opportunity! If you can your video to appear here, you can:

• Create and submit a video sitemap to Google.
• Include your keywords within the video sitemap, in the Title, Description, Tags and Category.
• Optimize your thumbnail image – include the code for the image in your sitemap, specify which one Google should use, make it 80X60 pixels and make sure it’s very relevant to the target keywords so searcher are likely to click on it.
• Get inbound links (even internal) with keyword rich anchor text.
• Make sure the content on your page that surrounds the video is highly relevant.
• Include the word “video” in with your target keyword phrase . Video is a very popular search term.
• Host your video on your website, so that you reap all the benefits.

6. News Listing. Especially for hot topics, news listings frequently make it to the first page of Google’s search results. To have your news item appear here, you can:

• Submit a News Sitemap to Google.
• Only submit original-content news, not republished or from a syndication feed.
• Make your news timely. Check out Google Trends to find keywords phrases that are currently hot and trendy for Google. Use these exact terms as target keywords for your news article.
• Make it a dynamic article – include recent updates and allow comments.
• Include your location. Google loves to show results closest to searchers, so let Google know the location the news article is relevant to and where it’s coming from.
• Have a strong publisher reputation. This can be influenced by how much and how often you produce original content for your news category.
• Do some basic article optimization – URL with keywords, relevant title, keywords in the content, etc.
• Include a .jpg image with relevant alt text and caption with no link.
• CTRs matter — so focus on relevant images and your best lines first to bolster your click-through rate.

7.  Twitter Feeds. Another aspect of universal search means that Twitter feeds can be included on the first page of the Google results. Here are some tips to get your tweets onto the first page (for a primer on Twitter and associated lingo, check out this blog post first):

• Make your twitter handle relevant – your company name is a great choice since it will add to your first page presence. Or, make your handle something simple based on target keywords.
• Be sure to include your target keywords into your Twitter bio and page description.
• Get as many “high quality” followers as possible. These should be highly credible sources for your target areas with high volumes of followers themselves.
• Make sure the first words of your tweet include your most highly prized keywords.
• Use a hash tag before your target keyword, but limit yourself to one hash tag per tweet.
• Your hash tag keyword should also be included in your tweet content if you can do this naturally.
• Timely topics and re-tweets are great – another great use for Google Trends.
• Not only can you tweets appear, but your twitter profile can appear on the first page of the results, too, so be sure to include a link from the Twitter profile to your website.

8.  Product Listing. Feed your products to Google Shopping.  Try thinking outside the box here: you can feed your available hotel rooms, pictures of your software product, pictures of homes for sale — it doesn’t just have to be traditional e-commerce products, but anything that’s for sale on the Web.

• Set up your product feed into Google.
• Provide very frequent updates to your feed — daily, if possible.
• Do some link building on your specific products.
• Include keywords in your product names, product descriptions (in the first words), and product images (separated by dashes in the image file name).
• Optimize your product categories for specific keyword terms.
• Fill in every single detail for the product that you possibly can.
• Don’t use any marketing or sales terms in your product feed.  Stick to words that people would use to find you, not necessarily how you refer to things.
• Including holiday or special event terms can be really beneficial for more long-tail terms.
• Connect to your Google AdWords account so that you get your products to also display along with your AdWords ad.
• Always set your location.
• Get ratings. Offer incentives to get a volume of high rates.
• Have a competitive price (including tax and shipping, if applicable).

As with everything else online – the following four main principles apply and will always get you results:

1. Make great, original content…
2. …from your searchers eyes (that is, use terms your searchers use to look for your offerings)…
3. …that is popular (thanks to links, ratings, followers)…
4. …and locally relevant (whether at the country level or a small town level, always indicate where you are from).

Happy first page domination to you!

Improve Your Page Rank on Search Engines

Maintaining and updating a small business website can often become a huge headache for business owners. Many small business owners start by outsourcing the creation of a website, which is then hosted on a service that may or may not be the host for the e-commerce site.

After the site is live and inevitable changes are required, making those changes typically involves re-engaging the contractor to do the updates. Because small business owners often defer updates to their sites in order to bundle as many changes as possible into a single work order, websites can quickly get out of date and begin to fall down in the rankings of natural (or organic) search engine results.  And keeping your website as high as possible in natural search results — called search engine optimization or SEO — should be a top priority.

What’s a small business owner to do? A great low cost way of creating a website that you – yes, even you – can maintain over time is to either host your site on a blog platform like WordPress or download WordPress to a site host (such as Rackspace or Amazon Web Services, for instance).  Six Apart and a few other providers also offers a range of blogging platform options.

Our website – which is separate from but linked to our Yield Web Marketing Suite application – is built on WordPress. Even big companies use this platform for very high-end sites, like this one built by Maybelline.

There are several benefits to publishing your website to a blog platform:

First: Low overall cost
Second: Huge array of pre-designed, low cost or free site layout templates to choose from
Third: Easy to edit and update yourself
Fourth: Sites published on blog platforms are easier to index, which is great for SEO

In addition to the pre-designed site layout templates that are available to you, there are a growing number of low-cost design firms, like Graphics.net, who can create something custom for you that looks great and meets your exact needs. Once they’ve published your custom-designed site to WordPress, you then have the complete power to make changes to the content or media whenever you’d like.

This also enables you to fully integrate your blog with your website. Many small businesses will have their main site under one URL structure, but host their blog under another, which does nothing to help your business with SEO.  And because it’s likely you’ll update your blog more frequently than your website, you can constantly work to integrate your keyword lists with your blog posts and keep your whole website high in natural search rankings.

Small plug: one of the great features of our Yield Web Marketing Suite is our site optimization component.  It will do a full assessment of your website (with new assessments recurring regularly as long you subscribe) to evaluate it against our library of SEO best practices.  After each assessment, you’re provided with a full listing of issues you need to address throughout your website in order to help improve your page rank on the the major search engines, including very clear instructions on how to fix each problem. In many instances, our system offers “auto-fixes” to solve the problem for you.

Websites are a given – every small business knows they need one. But creating and maintaining one on your own – or with the one-time support of a low-cost vendor – doesn’t have to be difficult or super expensive.  At the end of the day, you do need a website that works as hard for you as you do, and is delivering the traffic you need to move your business forward.  By building and maintaining a website that is constantly updating and converges sensibly with your keyword lists, you’ll stay as high as possible in natural (and therefore free) search rankings while improving the traffic that comes from clicks on those links.

For other blog posts in this series go here.

For information about how our Yield Web Marketing Suite can help your existing website to rank higher in natural search engine results, go here.

When you view a search engine result page in Google, Yahoo! Search or Microsoft Live Search, you almost always see two kinds of results: Sponsored Links, which advertisers pay to place on the page, and natural search results.  On Google, for instance, sponsored links can be found on the top and right-hand sections of the page, while natural (or organic) search results can be found in the main section of the page.  At the bottom of the page, you’ll typically see that the page is one of many, many pages of results.

The goal of SEO is to improve the volume and quality of traffic coming to your website from natural search results—traffic that is acquired for free. Obviously, sites that appear very high up on the first page of natural search results tend to see the greatest numbers of clicks and, therefore, traffic.  Which is why businesses, organizations, publications, and information and entertainment sites are increasingly concerned with how they can move links to their sites as high up on page one of natural search results as possible.

Search engines evaluate whether your page is relevant based on a variety of secret and not-so secret criteria.  Most of these criteria are designed to ensure that your page has content relative to the searches query.  This has two effects: first, searchers will be more satisfied with the results provided by the search engine and will become loyal users; and second, advertisers will be willing to pay more for advertising as the search engine will have more loyal and satisfied users.

Determining the keywords that naturally pertain to your business and service – the words that people will naturally enter into search boxes for information about any given topic – is an important first step in optimizing your site for search engines.  Once you’re clear what these keywords are, it’s important to be sure those keywords are represented in the content of your website.

It’s important to note here that each of your pages should be about a specific, unique topic, and not something broad and not something that is trying to match for multiple concepts.  SEO is competitive so you can’t be all things to all people.  It’s also important that you include your keywords in your site’s content in a way that’s both natural and intuitive – simply stuffing a bunch of keywords in your site’s content, for instance, will be a flag to the major search engines that something’s not quite right.

Next, you should make sure your pages are listed with the search engines (you can submit links to each search engine).

Another important step in SEO is ensuring that the title of each of the pages in your website are constructed in such a way that search engines can instantly relate them to relevant keywords searches.  If you’re not the webmaster for your website – that is, if you didn’t build it yourself – it may be difficult to understand how to change these page titles, as they are in the HTML code for your pages and invisible to you when viewing it.

One of the ways in which the major search engines determine the page ranking for your web pages also depends on the number and the quality of third-party links to your pages.  Again, these links must be natural – that is, they shouldn’t be a part of a dishonest linking scheme, as the major search engines have gotten very good at detecting these.

Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have tons of other ways to determine how it is your site will rank on a search result page for any given keyword query.  So it is the best policy to fill your website with content that is an honest reflection of your goods and services, as well as a reflection of the customers you do serve and whom you seek to serve.

Over time many people have concocted shady ways of getting at SEO for websites.  According to Wikipedia:

[A] class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or Spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

It is through authentic, high-integrity website creation – designed with your customers in mind first and foremost – that you are most likely to succeed in optimizing your site for the major search engines.

Small Plug: take a 30-day free trial of our Yield Web Marketing Suite, which includes fully automated processes for optimizing your website for search engines.  You get very practical, highly actionable to-do lists for improving and optimizing your website that are simple to understand and easy to act on.  SEO doesn’t have to be hard or intimidating, and we’d love to show you how.

For more information on the Yield Web Marketing Suite, go here.

To see Google’s guidelines for building and optimizing websites, go here.

To see more blog posts in our Introduction to Web Marketing Series, go here.