Flying fingers mean typos, and Google offers two ways of handling spelling mistakes in its search results.

Search instead for…. means Google has anticipated what you meant with your incorrect spelling.  It auotcorrects your spelling, and presents search results with the correctly spelled search phrase, with the option to rerun your search with your incorrect spelling.  In this example I have misspelled the word solicitor, and Google has taken the decision to present the results with the correct spelling:

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I’m more familiar with Google searching for my incorrect spellling, and presenting the mispelled results.  In those instances if offers me the option to rerun my search with the option “Did you mean…”

Some interesting questions to ask:

• Have you investigated the spelling mistakes Google recognises, and incorporate it into your SEO strategy?
• Will Google changing the way I typed in my search in any way change the intention of my search?  Skew my search results?
• What implications does this have for SEO? What words does Google “know”the correct spelling for? And what implications does this have for SEO companies optimising for mispellings?

When was the last time you reached for phone book when you needed a hotel, a florist, or indeed…. a solicitor? We’re much more likely to reach for Google rather than the good old Yellow Pages, and “Local Search” is way the Internet presents geo-targeted information about your business, including location maps, customer reviews, and detailed information about your services.

Google reports that one in every thirteen searches includes a map in the search results. That means a lot of people searching for local businesses, and one of those people might be your prospective new client.

Local searching isn’t limited just Google web search. Yahoo! has a local business listing service (http://uk.local.yahoo.com) and Microsoft’s Bing search engine shows local listings and a map for most local searches (http://www.bing.com/maps).

Nevertheless, the major player in Local Search is, of course, Google. Run a search for a local business type, say “Solicitor Newcastle”, and you will trigger search results from the Google Maps service that includes a list of 7 local business listings, including mapping information. This display is known as the Local Onebox and the 7 business listing is the Local 7-pack.

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If there aren’t enough suitable businesses to generate a 7-pack, then Google might display the local 3-pack, and indeed sometimes just a single company listing is displayed, for instance for a search for your company name.

You can submit your business to the free Google Maps service at the Google Local Business Centre. You will require a Google account to list your business, and it is likely that your company will already have an account if it is using Google services like AdWords advertising, Google Analytics, or Gmail.

There is a very good chance that Google will have your company listed already even if you haven’t provided the information yourself. Google gathers information from a number of Internet Directory sources, and it may have created a generic listing for you. If that is the case, it is essential for you to claim the listing as your own. If you do not claim your listing yourself, you may find yourself victim of the scam known as “hijacking.” At its simplest, that means another organisation claims your listing, but changes the phone number to be their phone number, thus siphoning off your phone calls. Reclaiming a hijacked listing is tedious, so prevention is much better than the cure.

As you enter your company information into the Google Local Business Centre, keep in mind that how you enter the information will have a significant influence in whether your firm appears in the all important Google 7-pack.

Google publishes Google Local Business Listing Quality Guidelines and in particular these rules stipulate

you can only list

Tips for creating the perfect Google Local listing:

Name of your firm: it is important to use your official company name in the Title of your listing, but also making it clear what you do. So, if your firm is called Smith & Jones and you are solicitors, then make your entry Smith & Jones Solicitors. It is against Google guidelines to cram in keywords, phone numbers, or other SEO trickery in your company name.

Business address: ensure your business address matches exactly the address you are listing on your website, and the address that is listed on other Internet directory sites. The more identical addresses Google discovers for your website, the better.  You can only have one Google listing for each physical address of your business.

Phone number: 0800 numbers do not indicate any geographic area, so be sure to include your local dialling code phone number. You can add your 0800 number, but make your local number the first number.

Business description: You have up to 200 characters to describe your business, and you will want to include keywords in here. Keep in mind, however, that this content is intended for humans, so it will need to read well, and cramming too many keywords in here may get you banned.

Business categories: The categories you choose to classify you firm are exceptionally important, so choose them carefully. You should choose some categories from the suggestions provided by Google, as well as creating your own categories.

For Internet searchers using their mobile phones, Google Mobile Search uses the My Location feature to pinpoint your precise location and provides you with search results targeted to your physical location. Put in the word “curry” into your Google Mobile search, and you’ll find every curry house in the vicinity. (http://www.google.com/mobile.)

In addition to the search engines’ own local business directories, firms should be creating listings in the major Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) websites. Many of these listings are free, and offer you a way to provide consistent contact information for your company. These directories can be generic business listings like Yell (www.yell.com), City Visitor (www.city-visitor.com/), FreeIndex (www.freeindex.co.uk ) or Touch Local (www.touchlocal.com).

Review websites play an important role in local search, so make sure your firm is being reviewed in services like Qype (www.qype.co.uk) and Yelp (www.yelp.co.uk)

And finally, in addition to your listings on other websites, you need to ensure your own website is giving off clear local signals. Make sure you are including your physical address, including postcode and local phone number on every page of your website; typically this will be included in a footer on the page.

There are many more factors that influence local search rankings, but if you address these as your top priority you should start to see good results. The importance of Local Search for law firms in the UK cannot be underestimated, and the process of providing complete, accurate and consistent location information is what you need to do in order to take advantage of this relatively new and low cost marketing tool.

Recently we did a web review for a company and noticed something strange about their site.  Their old web pages could be found in Google, but none of their most recent new web pages were visible. The company in question holds regular public events and their website is one of their main channels for promoting them.  Google (and other search engines) simply were not see any of their new events information and so couldn’t include it in their search engines results pages.

It’s easy to check what content from your site is in the search engine database or cache. Just type in the command Cache:TheWebAddressYouWantToCheck

And Google will display the date that the spider last crawled that page, in this example on 4 March 2010 at 18:17:

What our client was seeing was an error message saying the page was not in the Google index:

Clearly there is a problem, and so the next place to check is your Google’s Webmaster Tools. This will show you when the Googlebot is visiting your site – and how many pages it indexes each time.

Login to your account in you’ll be able to see the spider indexing your site. It is typically to have a “deep crawl” periodically, with regular “small crawls” on a daily basis.

Our client didn’t have Webmaster Tools, or they probably would have seen a flat line with no indexing taking place.

A little bit of investigating soon worked out why the Googlebot wasn’t crawling our client’s site – an incorrectly configured Robots.txt file.
Robots.txt is a file on your server designed for guiding the search engines spiders as  they crawl your site.  But get it wrong and you could be doing your rankings some serious damage.   A basic example looks like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

In the first line, User-agent refers to the web robot you are addressing your instructions to , and the * means all robots.

In the second, line, Disallow tells the robots which areas of your website they can’t visit.  In our example no areas of the website are off-limits.

But our client’s robots.txt file looked like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

That second line is the source of all of their problems – their robots.txt file is telling all web robots not to crawl their website.  They are disallowing access to everything on their site, effectively putting up a big sign saying “no robots allowed”.

Their old content had previously been crawled and hence was in the Google index.

But none of their new content was being discovered.

Why had the web designer done this? Because they had moved their website to a new server, and  somehow this error crept in.

Of course this also had a knock-on effect on the ranking of their website.  Within weeks of correcting their robots.txt file the site has shot up to the first page of the rankings for many of their main keyword searches. That’s without any extra Search Engine Optimisation work being done.

This company was still getting traffic from Google, to pages that were indexed before the robots.txt was accidentally changed, and so it took a web review for them to notice the mistake.  But if they had used Webmaster Tools they would have spotted the problem immediately.  They are free and available to all site owners, so if you are serious about SEO it’s worth getting an account.

Robots.txt can be really useful, but an incorrect file could have a major impact on the success of your site.  Do yourself a favour and use the free tools out there to ensure that your website is in peak condition.

Good luck!

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Katie Saxon

Join me and my handpicked selection of Internet marketing experts for a full day of discussing the latest tools and techniques for promoting your business on the Internet. Book now for your early bird registration discount.

Date: 14 May 2010
Location: East Midlands Conference Centre
Cost: Early Bird Registration only £195 +VAT, rising to £245
Full Details: www.theInternetConference.co.uk

Google have announced another new search feature:  Google Stars.  Click the little star icon next to any particular search result, and you are tagging in and creating a set of pages that will feature in your own personalised version of the search results.

In this example, I’m searching for the infamous Turkey Point Lighthouse, which now has the greyed out star beside it’s entry which I have highlighted in yellow in this image:

If I choose to click on the star, next time I search, my starred items appear in a new category called “Starred Results” appearing at the top of my (and only my own) search results:

The real benefit of this, as compared to the former SearchWiki feature, is that you’re not changing the search results, just pulling together your favourite sites into an easily accessible set of selections.

You need to be logged into your Google account to use this feature

Learn more at

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/stars-make-search-more-personal.html

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Bit.ly isn’t just a URL shortener, turning long web addresses into short addresses. It’s also a social media measurement tool that counts clicks, monitors conversations,  and store your data all at the click of a button.

If you ever share links via social media then you’ve probably used an URL-shortening tool at some point. Bit.ly with its extra data collection features is well worth consideration amongst the broad stable of shortners that also includes services such as Google’s goo.gl, Cligs, and the grand daddy of shorteners, TinyURL.

Just as you wouldn’t launch a website and never check how it’s performing (shame on you if you would) you need to keep an eye on social media too. Not analysing your performance on social media could be the kiss of death for your campaign. The data offered by bit.ly will help you to check how your campaign works, so let’s see what they tell you:

Number of Clicks

The basic stuff – how many people have clicked on your bit.ly link – whether you’ve tweeted it or used it in an email. Use this data to test what your customers want to read about. Find out if your method of delivery makes a difference to click through rates. Keep trying out different styles until you find one that works.

But bit.ly has a nifty trick up its sleeve. It can tell you how many people have clicked on a link to your page altogether. They can monitor any bit.ly link to your URL – so even if someone creates a different short link to your fantastic blog article bit.ly will still show you the data.
And, they’ll even tell you who’s linking to you:

Conversations

The bit.ly feature conversations pulls together all conversations containing your link into one handy place. So you can see at a glance if someone said “brilliant article…” or “I can’t believe they wrote this…!” This shouldn’t be your only guide to how people are responding to your content, but it’s useful for a quick thumb in the air test.

The one draw-back here is that you will only see conversations from Twitter and FriendFeed so if you only use Facebook you aren’t likely to find anything of use.

Traffic Data

As with every good measurement package this can tell you when people used your link, which site referred them to you and which country your customers come from.

*Warning*

If you are new to twitter and only have a small number of followers your traffic figures are likely to be low. (What do you mean 50% of my customers are in Singapore??) Don’t set too much store by this data, it should just be a useful guide suggesting the days when your target customers are most likely to read what you have to say.

Bit.ly at the moment is relatively limited in what it can measure. That said, it could help you to test, monitor and refine your social media strategies – much more than your bog-standard URL shortening tool. Data is great, but it’s what you do with it that counts – do you really need to know more?

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Katie Saxon

Universal Search is the “other” content that Google displays in the search results: Images, Video, Shopping results, News, Maps, and more. The prominence of universal search results means less space on the first page of Google results for your own website to appear. Your search engine optimisation strategy isn’t just about your optimising your website, you now need  tactics for getting your other content ranking well.

How do you optimise your own content for Universal Search?  I’ve produced some quick checklists for the main results types that I presented at the eChampions event about Universal Search.  I’ve summarised them here, and provided access to my slides:

Optimising Video for Search

• Use Original Text when describing your video – make it unique, and keyword rich
• Video Title (120 characters)
• Description (start with your URL) (1000 characters)
• Tags (120 characterse)
• Nothing new under the sun: Incoming links
• Community interaction: Views, Ratings, Comments
• Your own interaction on YouTube: contributions
• Views: embed on other keyword rich relevant pages
• Going viral: Name your channel something good (“How to..”

Optimising Your Products for Google Shopping

• Requires online sales
• Create a high quality data feed with complete set of item attributes
• Category
• Mandatory, Recommended & Optional attributes
• Tax and shipping
• Specific Image
• Manufacturers Part Number (MPN) or Universal Product Code (UPC) or equivalent
• Custom attributes (what people search for)

Optimising Your Google Local Listing:

• Verify listed in Google Local Business Centre
• Have a local address
• Choose appropriate categories for listing
• Include product/service in Company Name
• Get listed in the major local directories
• Create a complete listing
• Have a locally-optimised website
• Get customer reviews

Optimising your News

See my article on successful Online PR (PDF)

• Press release newswire services
• Keyword rich
• Headline
• Summary
• Headings
• Bold, italic
• Focus on keywords at the top of the release
• Keyword density
• Keyword rich links back to your site

Universal Search Optimisation
– Slideshare Slides

Choosing the right keywords is an essential part of your SEO strategy.  Once you know the killer keywords that your customers are using to search for your products you can build your search engine optimisation plan accordingly.

So, how do you go about finding those killer keywords?  Here are my tips:

Brainstorm keywords you think you should use

It’s an obvious, but important step.  What does your company do?  What do you sell?  Starting with a basic list of your products or services is an easy way to get some initial keyword ideas.  But once you’ve got the obvious keywords on paper dig deeper and add subcategories.

For example, you own a beauty salon and all you have on your keyword list is waxing, facials and massages.  That’s a great start but you can do better.  Don’t you actually offer eyebrow waxing , leg waxing and bikini line waxing (ouch!)?

With a little bit of thought you can probably come up with some two word keyphrases and you’re on your way to developing a good SEO strategy.

Keyword Research: The Secret Weapon of SEO

There’s a secret weapon used by Search Engine Optimisation experts the world over – Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  This will show you if your customers are using synonyms, misspellings, singular or plural versions of your keyword and more.  Let’s look at our beauty salon, who came up with the keywords “leg waxing”:

All basic variations to do with leg waxing that they might expect.  But further down you’ll see gems like:

and

…these could be smartly optimised articles “Does leg waxing hurt?  Not with Our Beauty Salon’s patented anti-ouch leg waxing formula…”  Or they might suggest new markets to target.  Who knew men long for silky smooth legs too?

Now this example may seem silly but it’s unexpected keyword results like this that might suggest new directions for your SEO campaign.

Long-tail keyphrases

Here’s another top tip for successful search engine optimisation.  Searchers who are looking to buy or book something will often use 3 or 4 keywords in their search engine query.    These are known as long-tail keyphrases and you want to find the ones that your customers are using.

If a potential customer for our beauty salon searches for leg waxing here’s what they’ll see:

Not very useful.  They are far more likely to get what they want if they search for “professional leg waxing Nottingham” or “mens leg waxing Nottingham”.  It is these keyword phrases that you need to identify and start using.

You’ll generally find that less people are searching for your long-tail keyphrases.  But the ones that do are more likely to become customers.  Especially if your website is well-optimised and full of useful content to help them buy your product or service.

So, to identify the killer keywords that will make your SEO strategy a runaway success, remember to:

• Brainstorm your keywords
• Research your keywords
• Think outside the box – never miss an SEO opportunity suggested by keyword research
• Start thinking like a customer and develop long-tail keyphrases.

Good luck!

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Katie Saxon

If Social Media is so important,  then why I am I recommending that your company ban Facebook?

Facebook now has 350 million active users around the globe – that’s an increase of 40% in just six months .  Of these users at least 175 million log on every single day, and they’re posting more content to the site than ever before.  So it may seem inevitable that your company will jump on the Facebook bandwagon and let your staff post away.

But is allowing access to Facebook really the best thing for your business?  Let’s look at the facts:

Facebook Wastes Staff Time

Statistics suggest that a large proportion of Internet use in the office is for personal business.  And – even more shocking – that two-thirds of traffic to porn sites happens during office hours.  I’m not suggesting that Facebook is a hotbed of pornographic activity, just that Facebook is not appropriate use of company time.

If your staff are updating their status, tagging themselves in photos and leaving posts on their friend’s’ walls they are wasting your time and your company’s money.  And, if you allow access to Facebook for business use how can you tell the difference between genuine business activity and time wasting?

Facebook Strains Your Internet Connection

Research shows that a massive 50MB of bandwidth a day could be wasted on non-work activities.  That means you’ll be paying significantly more than you need to for you internet connection.  And any business that you do conduct online will be slowed down by the loss of bandwidth.

Not only are you throwing money down the drain but you are putting more strain on your IT department by letting staff use Facebook.

Facebook Could Ruin Your Reputation

Your previously immaculate reputation could go down in flames very quickly indeed from just a few careless Facebook remarks.

Virgin Atlantic employees are calling their customers Chavs, and say the airplanes are full of cockroaches.

More than 8,000 Vodafone customers received an obsene tweet sent out by an employee based in local Stoke, and hundreds replied thus propogating the message over social space.  Vodafone has had to do some serious grovelling to get out of hot water.  And more importantly, they have had to suspend the employee.

If you allow your staff onto Facebook – and they can mix business and pleasure while they are there – it’s only a matter of time before the headlines read “Facebook Disaster for [insert your company name here]”.

Facebook Could Land You In Legal Hot Water

While the Vodafone case is a story of a stupid joke gone horribly wrong it does show how easy it is to mess up.  Your company has a responsibility to keep your client’s private data private, and all it takes is a slip of a click for someone to accidentally broadcast confidential information to the world.

Not only could this be potentially damaging to you, your client and your respective reputations, but it could also put you in hot water legally.
And that’s without considering the damage a disgruntled employee could do all with the help of Facebook.

Facebook Could Get You Sued

One of Facebook’s best features is how easy it is to share content with other users – but this content isn’t always be appropriate for the office.  And, if an employee is offended or intimidated by the content their colleague is sharing via Facebook, your company could be landed with a lawsuit.

The easiest way to avoid the potentially unlimited payouts from a discrimination claim?  Block employees access to Facebook and other similar file sharing services.

So when you consider the additional costs to your company and potential damage to your reputation, can you really afford not to ban Facebook?

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Katie Saxon

Welcome to Katie Saxon, who has joined Hallam as an SEO Executive. She’ll be part of the team writing blog postings, and this is her Social Media Checklist for New Employees.

Welcoming a new member of staff into your company? This is a good time to run through the essentials of a good social media presence.

Build a LinkedIn Profile

An absolute must – not only does it help your company by boosting your online presence, but also new employees can connect with your staff, partners and clients in a quick and easy way.

Remember to include a keyword rich link to your company.

If your newbie is at all shy or not good at remembering faces, this is an ideal way to introduce themselves while showing their credentials.

Take a look at my LinkedIn profile.

Get Blogging

Does your company have a blog?  (If not, why not? Blogging is an important SEO tool, ignore it at your peril.)  Ask your new member of staff if they would write a post for your blog.

The exact angle is up to you – they could write about their first day/week/month on the job.  Maybe you want them to give a beginners perspective on some of your expert knowledge.  It could be as simple as asking them to write a short piece introducing themselves.
Just go with whatever will work best for your company blog.

Start Tweeting

If you’re on twitter perhaps your newbie could write some twitter posts for you.  It’ll take them less time than writing a full blog post, so they might be happier with doing this.

Maybe you don’t want them to tweet on behalf of your company, but could they use twitter professionally?
If they have their own profile, which establishes them as an industry expert and employee of your company they can tweet about relevant content that interests them.  It helps you to build your company profile, without you necessarily needing to monitor what they say.

Follow @ksaxoninternet to see my latest tweets on Internet marketing

Sign up to Delicious

This is a really good way for any new member of staff to start knowledge sharing.  I’m always stumbling across interesting articles online that I want to share with my colleagues and connecting on Delicious is an easy way to do this.

If your staff already use Delicious then this is a great way of pointing your new employee towards the articles you want them to read. You can see what I’m reading on my Delicious profile.

Create a Google Profile

This is another useful way to build your company’s online presence.  And if you’ve got your staff tweeting, blogging, connecting on LinkedIn and bookmarking on Delicious their Google profile can direct you to all of their other social media profiles.  Take a look at Susan Hallam’s Google Profile.

There are of course lots and lots of other social media applications that your staff can use to enrich their experience of working for you – and to increase your web presence.  My checklist is just a starting point – you just have to decide which are most appropriate for your business.

Hope you find this useful, I’ll be writing again soon, Katie.