Man-On-The-Street From Search Engine Strategies in San Jose
08/03/2004
Jay Berkowitz, Ten Golden Rules, is once again on the conference beat and providing his Man-On-The-Street insights. This time Jay reports from the Search Engine Strategies show in San Jose. Those who have read Jay's prior posts (June 1 Ad:Tech 2004 Man-on-the-Street/under Interactive Marketing topic) know that Jay has a talent for capturing the key points and often finds time for a surprise interview or two with industry leaders.
Live From Search Engine Strategies by Jay Berkowitz
I saw regular SIG (AMA) participant Shari Thurow, author of "Search Engine Visibility" present "Search Engine Friendly Design", Shari was great and really well received by the audience.
Here are some of my notes (from Shari's session):
- When designing sites don't focus solely on Search results. Design for users first and keep the search engines in mind
- Make your site easy to read and navigate and use consistent design throughout
- Make sure you use lots of text (250 words per page is optimal) and use normal clickable text not images
- Use traditional links and make it easy for visitors (and search crawlers) to navigate the site
- Watch out for companies that promise to promote your site using 'information pages' or 'doorway pages'
- Build links to your site from other popular sites in the same industry, trading links with relevant sites will greatly improve your search results
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I interviewed David McInnis the founder of PRweb and Greg Jarobe from SEO-PR who will present on Optimizing News Releases for Search Engine Success later this week. Each month more than 27 million people use Google News and Yahoo News to find the latest information about a variety of topics, so optimizing your releases so that they come up in searches by consumers is a very powerful strategy!
David's and Greg's Strategies For SEO Success
- Do your keyword research to determine what keyword phrases get the most searches each month and include those phrases in the release Global Promoter and click on Keyword Suggestion Tool and enter keywords to see number of searches per month)
- Use the top keyword phrase you are targeting in your headline
- Use other important keywords in the first paragraph
- Target 'keyword density' in the overall release. Ensure that the most important keywords make up a high percentage of the overall words in the news release
- Remember the journalists 'inverted pyramid' - the most important part of the release is the Headline, then paragraph one then body copy - Include a search term in a live link as 'anchor text', for example Online
Marketing Tips links to the tips section on my website
- Include a photo in your release, this is an excellent way to improve pick up by publications and click through rates
