Entries from Category Organic Search Optimization

A few weeks ago, one of our clients contacted us because they had been approached by another SEO agency claiming that their website was poorly optimized for search. After reviewing the advice from the other agency, we discussed our thoughts with the client, who then told us that they weren’t actually concerned about our work, just wanted to inform us.

This hasn’t been the first time one of our clients has received such claims of poor SEO on their website. So why are they receiving such emails?

Continue Reading Do You Really Want Unsolicited SEO Advice? →

In January, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz posted his list of 8 SEO Predictions for 2012. We’re certainly fans of Rand and the folks at SEOmoz, but like anyone trying to predict the future – not everything will be right. The SEO team thought it would be fun to comment on how well these predictions will play out in the future. We had 3 members of our SEO team react to the predictions and offer their opinions on where things might be right or wrong.

Continue Reading 8 SEO Predictions for 2012 – Our Grades →

Are you considering adding a home improvement blog to your website to increase your SEO efforts? As a company specializing in online marketing for home improvement companies, we would like to outline what a home improvement blog would do for your SEO.

Continue Reading A Home Improvement Blog — Your Best Way To Increase SEO →

Welcome to the tenth edition of The Search, a weekly recap of all the interesting posts from the areas we deal with most: paid search, project management, social media, SEO, email, and mobile marketing. Check back each week to stay on top of the latest and greatest techniques in online marketing so that you can improve your skills and better serve your clients. Enjoy!

Paid Search

• PurePPC: 3 Commonly Overlooked Tips for PPC
• RKG Blog: DRIVING PROFITABLE LEADS THROUGH PAID SEARCH
• PPC Hero: Google Releases AdWords Editor Version 9.5
• Traffick: AdWords Custom Polygon Targeting Sunset

Search Engine Optimization

• SEOMOZ: 9 Actionable Tips for Link Prospecting
• SEO Theory: How to Write for SEO in 2011
• Search Engine People: 7 Current Trends In SEO To Improve Your Ranking
• Free SEO News: Optimize Your Internal Links To Get Higher Search Engine Rankings

Social Media

• Yahoo Advertising: The Five Best Things in Social Media
• Inside AdWords: Doing More With The +1 Button
• Social Media Explorer: 5 Steps to a Successful QR Code Marketing Campaign
• Twitter Help Center: Twitter Adds User Galleries
• The Facebook Blog: Making It Easier to Share With Who You Want

Mobile

• Mashable: 8 Best Practices for Deploying a Top-Ranked Mobile App
• eMarketer: Quick Stat: Smartphone Users Account for 38% of Mobile Phone Users
• HubSpot: 3 Steps to Prepare for Emerging Mobile Platforms

Email

• B2B Email Marketing: Email Marketing Practices of the Top Online Retailers
• B2B Email Marketing: The Best and Worst Times to Send an Email
• Responsys: Week-End Trends: Email volume spikes ahead of Hurricane Irene

Web Analytics

• Google Analytics Blog: Introducing Multi-Channel Funnels
• Occam’s Razor: Your Web Metrics: Super Lame or Super Awesome?

This morning, one of our team members pointed out something that she had seen while browsing Google. It appears that when a domain is entered as a search query without the .com, it provides brief intros after the sitelinks for top traffic pages in the results.

This seems to only work for the website domains, so it again makes branded search more apparent on Google, which is no surprise, given Google’s love affair with brands. It is good news for brands and their domains as it helps to drive traffic to your best pages.

So what does this mean for SEO? Our SEO Scientist at Three Deep said that current CTR studies will be rendered invalid as these results change the layout. Now, especially, page titles and meta descriptions are far more important for high traffic pages, as the meta data will have to be shorter. How short? Looks like about 35 characters max, with a cutoff at the previous word before that limit is hit.

What do you think of this layout? Does your brand or domain have these extended sitelinks? We are looking forward to learning more about this and publishing a follow-up article sometime in the near future. Stay tuned!

I write this while traveling to the east coast to meet with some great clients. During my travels and on-site meetings, the news of Google Instant flooded my Inbox, twitter stream, Google Reader and just about every medium in between.

In between meetings, I was asked to weigh in on the topic by co-workers, peers and clients.  Since my response has been the same throughout, I thought it might be worthwhile to share my thoughts (and the general sentiments of Three Deep as well) in this space.

Continue Reading Google Instant Search – My Instant Reaction →

The case of the National Federation of the Blind v. Target should send a bone-chilling shiver down the back of an e-commerce website owner. Jeffery Bashaw’s (University of Washington School of Law, Class of 2008) legal abstract makes the message clear:

Get your website in line with the American Disabilities Act or get a lawyer…. A good one.

The case ended with Target Corporation paying out over $3 million with an additional 6 million dollars in a settlement fund to further compensate because their Target.com site was not easy to use by the blind. Not being accessible to the blind is a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And yes, websites are governed by this law.

Continue Reading Disability Compliance: Target Got Sued for over $3 Million, Don’t be Next →

Last week I had the honor of speaking at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management for a class entitled BA 1905 — “Internet Search Economics, Google, and New Business Opportunities” - a great name for a course covering this relatively new industry, with some truly engaging curriculum around my favorite topic of conversation: Search Engines, Marketing, and creating a business model around increasing visibility on the web.

With a blank canvas to work with and many possibilities for conversation, the professor and I decided that it would be best to do an hour long presentation on Google.  The presentation pretty much wrote itself from that point on.  Here is the full slide deck:

A few weeks ago, we received a concerned call from one of our clients.  Apparently, they had been solicited by another company that offers similar online marketing services to Three Deep, and they were directly questioning the work we had done for them.  The solicitors did a great job of undermining our efforts by simply putting the URL through a free service called Website Grader, printing a screen shot, and clicking send.

Frankly, they made a compelling argument; the grade the site received was not great by any means, and was a definite cause for concern at a surface level.  Nobody wants to receive a poor grade.  At the same time, I was equally concerned with the implications of these results, because I personally built much of the site, entered content, and did a quality job of making the site search friendly for the their local market and the services they offer.

It looks bad, but it's not really THAT bad

I have spent many hours with this client over the past several years, working hard to make sure they were happy and that we were meeting their objectives.  So when the work that we had done on this website came into scrutiny, it hit me like a ton of bricks.   Were we not properly servicing this client?  How much work will it take to fix?

Rather than dwell on the poor score we received, I spent the next 45 minutes skimming through the criteria that this site used to grade SEO scores (honestly, I feel the criteria is very out of date and I don’t agree with much of it).  I then found the elements of the site receiving poor grades (90% of the grade comes from home page only) – “fixed” it – and reran the grading program.

Voila! In no time I had increased the score by 51%!  Now the site was no longer a laughing stock, but actually a leader among its sitegrader peers.

But what exactly changed on the site during those 45 minutes to actually make this site better for SEO?

Continue Reading Automated SEO Services like Website Grader – Thoughts →

Here at Three Deep’s offices, we are always talking about our craft, whether email marketing, SEO, reporting, etc, and how to improve the service we provide our clients.  We are presently in the process of building out a model for how we can best serve our clients… and also educate them on how SEO best fits into their overall marketing mix.  Through much trial, continued learning, and a few hundred whiteboard sessions, we have made major inroads in establishing an equation as to where exactly SEO fits in to our clients marketing mix (the answer is everywhere).

Given all of the time that we have put into working on this equation, it’s a little surprising that we don’t have any excellent infographics to help visualize what we are working to achieve for our clients.  Fortunately, there are many bright minded and artistically gifted bloggers out there who can help fill the gap.  This weekend, our president Dave Woodbeck sent us the following graphic (courtesy of SEO superstar Matt McGee):

SEO Success Pyramid

You can read the full breakdown here, but the basic premise is that rather than relying on one or two tactics to simply try to “exploit” Google’s ranking algorithm, the most successful sites focus on building quality content that engages users, presents something of value, and is easily “linkable” from other sources.

Continue Reading SEO Success Pyramid – Strategic SEO →