The Web Smart Blog

The Web Smart Blog exists to extend the information provided in our monthly Web Smart Newsletters. Web information changes so quickly that a monthly publication can't cover enough ground. Also, additional information to past topics can't wait for future publication so we add related newsletter information here.

Thanks for the Feedback and the Links!

April 2, 2008 at 2:39 pm by Eric

Thanks to some of the folks who linked to the past two month's video newsletters on SEO. Andy Beal added the videos to his "Pilgrim's Picks" and Debra Mastaler, (the link expert) gave us a couple links from her blog.

SEO expert Aaron Wall gave some great feedback, correcting my approach to using the meta description area. He has a video on his site providing more depth on using descriptions more strategically.

Thanks everyone for your responses, links and feedback!

(Added 4/3/08) And late thanks to Bill Seaver at Micro Explosion Media for the post and links!

Tags: seo search

Comments (0)

Get Yourself Out There

February 11, 2008 at 2:30 pm by Chris

Brian Solis says that lack of comments means lack of influence, but I say don't expect a ton of comments unless you are approaching A-list (or even B-list) status. In fairness, Solis also says that "measuring the success of a blog based on the amount of comments is just lame," and I completely agree. In fact, according to Jakob Nielsen's study, 90% of online community users are lurkers, meaning they read but don't comment, while only 9% contribute a 'little' and 1% contribute actively. While this study is not specific to blog comment participation, it's likely that the principle is applicable though the numbers may have a "+ or -" factor. This means that the majority of your blog readers will probably not be commenting on your posts anytime soon.

As is obvious to anyone who reads this blog, I don't get a ton of comments, so this isn't going to be one of those "I did it and so can you!" posts. Like Brian Solis says above, comments are not always going to be the best judge of the current success of a blog. However, there is always room for improvement, and as readership increases, so, too, should commenting. So, my blog has a way to go. There just is no magic wand to use to instantly get lots of traffic to your blog. There are ways to gradually increase the amount of activity on your blog, but to do it, you've got to get yourself out there.

Establish Your Hub
The first step is to give readers a way to find your blog. If you already have a website that gets some traffic, your blog can be integrated into your existing site's structure. If your blog is your online hub, you can use your profiles on various social networks to point readers your way (to learn more about this, see an earlier post titled Is that Really You?).

Read Other Blogs to Stay Informed
Next, you'll need to find and start reading other blogs that deal with the same topics that you deal with on your blog. Being familiar with the larger conversation is crucial to both gaining readers and being properly informed on those subjects that you plan to write about. Use a feed reader (we like Google Reader) to subscribe to the RSS feeds for these blogs and get into the habit of reading through your feeds daily. If you've come to the determination that blogging is important enough to your web strategy to actually create one, you'll also need to realize the importance for making time to read other blogs. Once you've done that, you'll probably find yourself asking how anyone could possibly keep up with the amount of information delivered via RSS to their computer every day. Here's how.

Leave Comments, but don't spam.
Finally, reading other blogs will help you stay informed, but it won't help you to get noticed. Remember, at this point, you're just lurking (not that there's anything wrong with that!). However, at some point you'll probably have something to add to the conversation that's happening in the comment threads of the blogs you're reading. That's a good thing, and you should do it. Most blogs allow you to add links to your comment, so if you have a blog post or webpage that is relevant to your comment, this is your chance to share it with the community. The more you participate by sharing insightful and valuable comments, the more you'll be able to share links without spamming the other readers of the blog. Participating in this way is crucial for developing recognized authority in regard to your area of expertise.

(In the spirit of conversation, here's a link to a blog post which asks how bloggers interact with comments. The comments thread to the blog is a fairly good indication of people's varying opinions on how to interact with comment on their and others' blogs.)

Then What?
Once you're off and running, there are several other strategies you can employ to get a sense for how your blog is doing, including setting up an RSS feed for search results for your name or your company's name online. If your blog has become a significant part of your online strategy, being aware of your online reputation will become more and more important. It will also give you a chance to respond quickly to those blogs that have noticed and mentioned you (for positive or negative reasons).

Tags: seo blogging google rss

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Understanding Bounce Rates

February 5, 2008 at 11:00 am by Chris

Understanding bounce rate is an important aspect of analyzing your overall statistics, especially when it comes to determining the effectiveness of an individual page. The bounce rate measures the number of visitors to a website that leave before a specified amount of time has elapsed (this time period varies among analytics tools, but typically it is 30 minutes). This means that if a user accesses your site and leaves it within 30 minutes or leaves their browser idle for that time, they will be registered as a bounce. The bounce rate for an individual page of a website is determined by the number of users that access a page and leave the site without clicking to another page within the specified time period.

Avinash Kaushik, Google's Analytics Evangelist, has blogged about measuring the effectiveness of your web pages and writes:

"My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying. I stress that this is my personal analysis based on my experience, but hopefully it gives you a feel for what you are shooting for."

One thing to keep in mind is that your expectation for meeting Kaushik's standard on any given page of your site should also be measured against the entrance sources for that page. Depending upon how a user is referred to your site, his or her understanding of the relevance of your site's content to their query will vary quite a bit. For example, if a user searches for "Chris Butler blog" and clicks the link on the search results page that leads them to my blog, it is quite possible that they will immediately leave once they realize that my blog is about web technology and strategy (perhaps the Chris Butler they were looking for is a wedding photographer). The point is that the more specific the search query, the more likely that a user will come to your page "pre-qualified" for the content he or she is about to receive and will not leave the page immediately.

If you take a look at the image to the left, you'll see the top seven entrance sources for this blog, and the corresponding bounce rates for users that entered from those sources. Notice that users that came to my blog directly register a very low bounce rate. This is to be expected since these users know the blog and therefore know generally what information they will be getting. On the other hand, notice that users entering the blog from Google register a higher bounce rate (overall, not too low, though). This is likely due to what I mentioned above about search query specificity. In fact, one of the top search terms that lead users to my blog is "alexa above the fold," yet I only used this phrase once in my blog in a slightly peripheral comment. This means that users coming to my blog after having searched for that phrase should be expected to register a relatively high bounce rate (their bounce rate is 40%).

One of the best ways that I have found to increase the number of "pre-qualified" users has been to post my blog articles to Digg. Since I've just gotten started with this, my Digg performance isn't that significant, but what has been important to me is that the users that do come to my blog via Digg register a very low bounce rate consistently. This is because Digg allows you to post a link to an article and then place it within a set of pre-defined categories. If a user clicks to your article from Digg, he or she will theoretically have at least narrowed down to a category of interest and will be "pre-qualified" for the information you provide.

Tags: seo google search analytics

Comments (2)

Sitelinks and Search Snippets Updated

January 22, 2008 at 10:00 am by Chris

In a past post (Sitelinks and Search Snippets) I mentioned that Google was rolling out a more expanded snippet for URLs that included a mini sitemap for the URL shown. I had also mentioned that Google had not implemented control of these site links for webmasters. As of recently, this is no longer true. Eric sent me the following screenshot (see below), showing that you can now control the sitelinks using Google's webmaster tools.

Tags: seo google search

Comments (0)

Sitelinks and Search Snippets

December 10, 2007 at 10:00 am by Chris

Several Newfangled clients have asked recently about Sitelinks, the list of links that display below some search results in Google which often look like a mini sitemap of the site linked in the results. Google introduced Sitelinks as a snippet feature to make it easier for users to get to the pages on your site that they want. They do this by analyzing your site's structure to find simpler ways to navigate it. Currently, Sitelinks are controlled by Google alone, so there is no way for you to ensure that your site will have them in its snippet. However, a well-structured site that is fully indexable by Google will be more likely to be chosen for Sitelinks.

Google has recently updated the algorithm to show up to eight Sitelinks per site, double the amount that used to display, as well as increase the number of websites that will appear in Google with Sitelinks included in their snippet.

Also, Matt Cutts, of Google, has recently created a nice short video explaining the overall 'anatomy' of a search snippet. You can read his post here, or watch the video below:

http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/191055117/