Search today, is not the user experience it first was. When searching Google, Bing or Yahoo! we often see richer results than the traditional ten blue links on a text heavy page. Now it is very common for a search query to trigger additional types of results too, particularly when searching Google you may see images, local listings (with a map) and of course video.

Whilst there are many statistics about video content being more likely to get to page one than standard text content; and whilst there is a great deal of truth in such statistics, there are conditions and dependencies. Just having video content on your site is not enough. Setting aside the content subject-matter and quality, your video needs to be optimised so that it can be effectively interpreted by search engines. Search engine crawlers cannot “see”, or “hear” video content, so we’re much more reliant on technical structure and on-page set-up, as information and relevancy signals here.

Technical/Structural

1. One video per page

Having one video per page allows you to explicity target data about that page, to the content of the video. As an example, having a keyword-rich URL, that speaks to the video content will provide an additional relevency signal.

2. Navigational and internal links

Ensure that your video(s) are well linked-to within the site, both by navigation and by internal linking. With internal links it is much easier and more natural to link with explicit anchor text, which will add additional meaning to what it is, that the video is about.

3. Video directory or sub-folder

House all collated video on the site, in to a specific folder or subdirectory i.e. http://mywebsite.com/video/

4. Video sitemap

Tell Google about your video content by creating a video sitemap and adding it to your Webmaster Tools account, for the site.

On the Page

1. Embed content

Ensure you embed your video content, as opposed to playing in a pop-up window.

2. File names

Give the video file a keyword-rich, descriptive name.

3. Meta data

Ensure the page meta-title and description are a good balance of keyword rich, meaninful data.

4. Transcribe where appropriate

Depending on the length of the video and additionally from an accessibility perspective it is considered best-practise to provide a transcript of the audio. Not only will this make the content accessible to hearing-impaired users, but having the content transcribed on the page will add additional meaning to search engines.

5. Allow for easy sharing

Certain types of video content may naturally have that share-appeal, however it pays to make this as easy as possible by ensuring your content is extremely easy for users to share. Consider providing an embed URL, and certainly ensure that you have social sharing icons to make it easy for users to share with their communities in a single click.

It’s a hotly contested topic at the moment, with many large media and organisations such as NMA and Econsultancy also debating which discipline is best qualified to own your strategy and budget, with Chris Lake of Econsultancy telling brand owners “your social media strategy shouldn’t be owned by a PR or ad agency“.

Registration is free and the event starts with a little light networking at 4.30, with the debate commencing at 5.30. Drinks and refreshments will be served.

Arguing their respective case:

Digital Marketers: Andy Oakes, NMA (New Media Age)

SEO specialists: Kevin Gibbons,  SEOptimise

PR specialists: Claire Thompson, Waves PR

Social Technologists: Benjamin Ellis, Redcatco

Social Media specialists: Nichola Stott, theMediaFlow

Event hashtag = #ownSMW

See you there!

Aaron Wall of SEOBook, a leading SEO resource based in the US, first reported this change in early November for the US market. In his post, Wall posits that for the set of sites that rank well for a term, rather than rank the page that might “traditionally” be the strongest (which is normally any sites’ homepage), Google is then applying “internal site searches & back in other relevancy factors to look for other popular & relevant pages on those sites“.

Looking at our client site rankings, and conferring with industry peers, it seems that this change hit UK shores around December 20th.

Here’s an example:

Simon owns one of the UK’s most established and authoritative sites retailing car parts www.potn.co.uk. The site retails products such as brake discs, alloy wheels, exhausts, high-performance tyres etc. Pretty much anything one may require in order to “pimp one’s ride”. Previously the site homepage has ranked in the top five for almost any term (product) that they retail. Post the 20th December update, Google now return the specific subpage listing for the term in question.

Search “alloy wheels” returns the following result, which was previously the homepage.

Although the listing has slipped a couple of places, one may imagine that the click-through rate on this listing may increase, as the URL shown is descriptive and entirely relevent to the user query. Plus, given the landing page is now the explicit alloy wheels page (on which conversion activity occurs), the revenue effect may be neutral to positive.

What is Happening Here?

Google are taking a further step in the persuit of relevancy and a better user experience, by applying site search (and other relevancy signals) to identify an even more suitable page from within the site; than the naturally more-authoritative homepage.

Who Should this Benefit?

Provided a site is well built, and contains good quality original content, any site can benefit; though in particular this could be useful for ecommerce websites, such as the POTN example above. Ecommerce retailers with multiple products, may now find that the specific product page now ranks where the homepage did previously – which should be great for both user experience and conversions.

Who Are the Losers?

Sites with poor information architecture and little, (or poor quality) content will fail to capitalise on this change. Sites that have failed to invest in content and infrastructure, but have instead chosen to game the algorithm by agressive link-building tactics will also find their poor strategy may no longer pay.

What if Google Are Showing the “Wrong” Page?

In most cases, this change should be quite positive for most quality websites. In some cases however, you may find that a sites blog (by its’ very nature more dynamic and containing more written content than a homepage) usurps a sites’ homepage. We have a client site, with very little written content on the homepage where the blog has usurped the homepage result for the sites core term. In this case, this is not a desirable effect; however we suspect from experience, that the user interaction (as fed back in the search metrics), will prompt the listing to revert to the homepage soon. In the meantime we’re making a couple of on-page changes to the blog, to de-prioritise the site’ core terms.

Future Considerations

This latest change to the Google algorithm makes an even stronger case for the necessity of good quality original content. Site architecture is pushed higher up the agenda. Best-practise in site artchitecture being to establish a flat and wide structure; that is, where content is divided up into as many channels as possible (without comprimising on what makes sense), where each channel is as close as possible to the homepage. That said; if applying site search is indeed the method Google are using to qualify sub-pages, perhaps there is a risk we may see the re-emergence of “SEO landing pages” and low quality keyword-stuffed content again.

The job of an SEO is not getting easier, but they can handle it.

One thing I often proclaim is that people should start looking outside of their websites when trying top optimize for search engines. Branding and marketing are becoming more important on places where people exactly are and search is going to play a much bigger role in branding than it did until now. I’ve written about that several times and I’ve even talked about it many times.

One thing I always have to watch out for when I’m saying these things is that people think they can ignore all the on site elements except for linkbuilding and that life has just become a lot easier, because you don’t need SEO anymore.

Here is where my story hits a ‘dangerous’ area. Because I do not believe that you do not need SEO anymore. In fact, SEO is the basis for becoming successful in your marketing and branding efforts. So on site SEO should be step 1, off- site SEO step 2. And though opportunities are growing, it is definitely not becoming ‘easier’ to optimize. The job of an SEO just got a bit more difficult again. But the SEO professional can handle that…

The job of an SEO evolved more or less from the job of a programmer. What you can see is that many programmers caught the “SEO-bug” and started working on optimizing websites from a code-perspective. Trying to make sites rank better based on things they can change in the code. That slowly changed when the technical parts were not the only ranking factors anymore. In came the textual part. When search engines decided a page was going to be ranked based on the content, all of a sudden SEOs were forced to think about text. And that is not always easy for a technical person who sometimes rather “talks-in-code” than in text.

But the SEOs got the hang of it and now had two major things they were supposed to do: optimize a website based on text and optimize the code. Or wait, is there more? Yes there is. Remember the idea Larry Page once had,.. Pagerank? This algorithm meant that another huge ranking factor is links. Links from other websites. So the SEO needed to do three things: think about the content, optimize the technique and get links. They could get links
technically by simply building a lot of sites but they should also get in touch with other website owners to ask them for links. In a way they were ‘selling’ their own sites to get the links.

Maybe the fact that SEOs are not sales people has something to do with some of the crappy link-exchange requests we get daily?

At this time an SEO combined three jobs in one: a technical programmer, a content writer/ editor and a sales person. And don’t think that each of the jobs they have to do is simply following a list. With the ever changing search engines the way things work within all of these areas can change from one day to another, just look at all the local aspects. Must be hard to do that within 40 hours. But hey, the SEO did it!

So that was the job of an SEO. And in comes web 2.0. Social Media, websites like Slideshare, Scribd, video sites like YouTube. You can all use them to get your brand out there and make a name for yourself. For that you need to first find out which are the places you want to be. Then optimize for that specific place and then get it all back to the original place you were optimizing for: your website.

This last change, the one I keep on talking about to many people is a change which also is added to the job-description of the SEO. They now have a fourth job to combine: marketer. And you know what? They just do it.

I don’t think you’ll hear of many jobs who have four that different jobs hidden inside one job. With the latest change, the SEOs job just got a little bit more difficult. But the SEOs can handle that, trust me

Bio

Bas van den Beld is a Web/search strategist, international search specialist, trainer, and well-respected blogger. Bas keeps up to date about all facets of online marketing worldwide and especially Europe.

Bas is the owner of Stateofsearch.com. He is also the owner of NetTraject, a Dutch company that advises on international search matters and provides training in search engine marketing and project management.

Bas is also a regular speaker on different marketing and search events. He’s also host of several podcasts, including a weekly show on a WebmasterRadio.FM. Bas also publishes on his personal blog, www.basvandenbeld.com.

Although Bing is currently very much the also-ran, in terms of search engine market share; their partnership with Yahoo! (which will be in effect in the UK before year end) plus their increasing innovations in search technology, plus rather enormous marketing budget means that they will be a serious contender in 2011.

I firmly believe that Bing will start to erode some of Google market share and by the start of 2011 will have at least 10% share if not more. Now is the time to start planning and acting on improving rank on Bing.

What’s the News?

Bing have confirmed that CTR is a factor in their ranking algorithm. This information comes from Barry Schwartz, news editor of Search Engine Land and Schwartz has carefully detailed and personally checked the information with his source, Steve Tullis – Senior Program Manager Lead, Bing. You can read the full story here.

What is CTR?

CTR is the abbreviation for “click-thru rate”. It is a derivative metric determined by dividing the number of times your listing is clicked (clicks), by the total number of times your listing is shown (search impressions), to determine your listing CTR, which is expressed as a percentage.

Example: My site is in position 10 for the term “car insurance”, on Bing, which is searched for 10,000 times a day. I receive 300 clicks a day from Bing, on that listing.

300 /10,000 = 0.03 (expressed as percentage) 3% CTR

What Factors Determine CTR?

Setting aside comparative CTR to competing listings, and the variation afforded by position on-page; in my first-hand experience of working at a search engine, CTR increases or decreases according to assumed relevancy to query term. I.e. the more relevant the page (may be assumed to be by the user,) to the query term, as signified by the title, description and URL of the listing; then the more likely the user will click that listing. Bing generally display the page’ meta title and meta description, as the search result snippet.

What Does this Mean for Rank?

In the Search Engine Land piece, Steve Tullis of Bing is asked if they use CTR as a ranking factor, “yes, we do – but it is one of many factors.” So assuming all other factors determining the ranking order for the sites on a search results page are fairly equal, we might imagine that a listing with compelling, relevant title, description and URL gets a slightly better than average CTR (than might be considered network average,) for the position then this may contribute to that listing moving up the ranking somewhat.

Do I Need to Do Anything?

I’m not a great believer in deliberately optimising for any single known componant of a single search engine’ ranking- algorithm, however in this case we’re talking about click-thru rate; which ranking factors aside, should always be on the agenda for your search engine optimisation team.

I’ve written a rather more detailed piece on four ways to increase organic search CTR for Econsultancy in the past, which is a good place to start. Ultimately, you do need to consider the user journey – in that the query-term, search snippet (normally meta data) and subsequent landing page, all need to provide a relevant and consistent experience. After all; you can optimise the shizzle out of your search result snippet, but if your web page content doesn’t match, you’ve missed an opportunity to convert a potential customer.

I intend to follow up this post with a look at the type of behavioural data CTR as ranking factor provides, plus examine the merits and demerits of CTR as ranking factor.

SEO-driven releases may be more likely to land up in a content aggregation site than they are ever to land up in a journalist’s in box, but they will be read by people as well as search engines, and in an ideal world will make people want to know more than simply what ranking Google delivers. The bunch of words created deserves also to be compelling reading.  And when it’s a press release, the reader expects news.

Before we start, we’ve all heard those comical rushed provisos, terms and conditions – the verbal equivalent of small print – at the end of radio ads. This next bit is the written equivalent of one of those: if the release you’re creating is for a highly regulated industry, such as financial services and pharmaceuticals, or for a listed company, it’s important to double check the specific rules relating to information release.

And think which type of person you would like to be reading your release (customer, partner, potential employee) and write in a style addressing them. Don’t fall into stereotype traps though – the results can be hysterical. The picture to the right is a great piece of government speak to teenagers in ‘text talk’ poster. You can see what the kids made of that.

I’ve made a recording with the key advice for creating releases on it, mainly because once I got stuck into this article, it drivelled on for far too long, but the key elements of a release, summarised, are:

1. Straightforward title explaining the story
2. First paragraph giving the important bits – who, what, where when, why in two sentences, top off with the reason anyone should give a monkey’s
3. Details of story
4. Optional: APPROVED quotes if used, properly attributed
5. Marker for the end of the story. (Conventions are to used the words /ENDS or ##)

The bit after the ‘end’ should be back up information, usually headed up ‘notes for editors

1. A ‘boilerplate’ – a standard description of around a paragraph in length, used for consistency, to describe the issuing organisation(s)
2. Additional information pertinent to, but not part of, the story
3. Any legal stuff that the lawyers insist on
4. Contact details

Generally the most important information needs to be highest up in the press release. With each passing paragraph you lose readers, so make sure it hooks the reader from the start. Any corporate guff needs to be right down at the end.

For myself, I usually make a bullet point list/mindmap of things I want to get into a story, and then try telling the story out loud, as if to a stranger in a bar. It works for me in an otherwise empty office. I can see some drawbacks in a crowded coffee bar. The aim is to cut out the unnecessary detail – or at least highlight what can appear further down the release.

This approach helps create a more natural tone too. Corporate speak and jargon are un-necessary. Check out Tim Phillips’ Talk Normal blog [http://talknormal.co.uk/] for some amusing rants about the kind of thing I mean. Sometimes it’s the professionals who are the worst offenders.

Most of all, think like a reporter – you want other people to pick up on what you’ve written and find out more, so deliver it like a reporter: in the third person (he, she, they rather than I and we), as factually and as interestingly as possible. And above all, honestly. Lying in such a public forum has to count as really dumb: unless, of course, you have a very dodgy PR strategy of creating a huge storm./ends

Claire Thompson, Waves PR is a freelance PR consultant with sometimes colliding passions for technology and the environment. She has worked on many campaigns campaigns from the big guys, like Kodak, Oracle and Apple, through to pre-launch start ups, including LastMinute.com in its early days. She can be found most places ‘socially’ as claireatwaves, but mostly only has time for Twitter, FaceBook and LinkedIN. Tel: +44 (0) 207 795 8147.

Technorati also use a proprietary blog ranking system, which is useful for helping you to find useful blogs in your marketing sector. Why is this useful? Other than the benefits of learning and reading, you can also use a list of blogs in your sector as a target list for link building and public relations.

Additional benefits exist for you as blog owner, if you add your blog to Technorati. Adding your blog, or “claiming” your blog if it is already on there, is of benefit as you get to ensure the details are as you would like them. Of course the link to your blog is a follow link – which is kind of like a “thumbs up” sign to a search engine crawler.

To claim your blog you just need to create an account on Technorati, add your blog and submit a claim. You will then be given a unique claim code like this Q7759JM7D5M7 (this one is mine ). You will need to write a new blog post and insert your code into the post so that Technorati can crawl and verify the code in your post – thus telling you are indeed the said author, of said blog.

Easy peasy!

Why not try this for your blog? www.technorati.com

We start off by debunking a few myths. Ralph goes through them; only high PageRank links are good, all paid links are bad etc. Don’t obsess too much about high PR links. PR can go up as well as down.

Another golden rule – not all links are equal. A good link building strategy needs competitive analysis and expertise. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, as your behaviour needs to look natural. What’s natural about 100 permanent links all a PR5+? Basically; don’t obsess about the “myths” or your behaviour becomes unnatural.

Our MC (conveniently Michael Caselli) asks – Is PR still important?

Ralph – yes. It is indicative of trust. Just don’t obsess and remember the toolbar PR is not the same as the Google internal PR. It’s “for entertainment purposes only”.

Marcus – it can be hard to find sites without paid links so monitoring drops in PR is a good way (when no other factor seems to warrant a penalty), to work out if a source is taking paid links.

Christoph – also be aware of how PR drops can identify linkbuyers. If you have a paid link source and that source drops 2-3PR and you remove the link, you’re identifying yourself to Google – yes, I bought that for the PR. Again Christoph echoes Ralph; don’t obsess about PR and don’t base your strategy on this.

A member of the audience brings up the “bad neighbourhood” term.

Christoph – look at other links on the site linking to you. Are they quality. Are they relevant?

Audience – is there a danger in having links from a site that takes paid links, even if your is not?

Marcus – Yes! (back to bad neighbourhood). Marcus given an analogy “if you’re sat in a bar next to Bob (Rains) and Dave (Naylor) – that’s a bad neighbourhood”. (LOL.)

Christoph – Great links are the ones your competitors can not get easily.

Sebastian – You need to start with analysis, backlink tools, your links, your competitor links. If you believe in white hat only in this industry, then Good Luck! Penalties are over-rated. Too much money in this industry and everyone is buying links. (Basically; they can’t spank the whole industry overnight.)

Ralph goes back to “bad neighbourhood” to give a different perspective – relevancy isn’t too concerning. A bad neighbourhood is more – cheap Viagra, buy Cialis – that sort of stuff. Agrees with Sebastian that this is a highly competitive industry, if you don’t go for black hat, you’re toast.

MC – when is too far?

Ralph – “When you fail” (I love this!)

MC – How many links do I need to get to position one for poker?

Ralph – (I’m paraphrasing) – “How long is a piece of string?” You can have a site with 7000 links in position 1 or a site with 150,000 links in position 1. Remember not all links are equal and your link strategy is just one part of over 200 factors. So many other variables in the mix.

Q from the audience – What is the one “Golden Link”?

Marcus had a great one from W3C. Essentially when they introduced the donation facility on their site, high donors got a link. Marcus was one of the first few – paid his $1k for a year. In his own  words that link was “better than sex”.

Christoph – points out that when such trust is transferred from a link like this, then linking to the next level down the tree is also of great benefit. Being a degree or so removed from that golden source is still worth it. Accumulating such links takes time and also why age/trust are inextricable.

Sebastian – if you develop a new domain, keep it clean, do your press releases. Buy a couple of great paid links; then when the site gets some trust and some traction, then you can really go for it.

Ralph – one of the problems with hunting for that “golden link” is often you can’t tell until after the fact.

MC asks the panel. If you want to rank for the term “Poker”, where is your golden link? Apparently this is a favourite question from Marcus and one he has previously offered money for the right answer for. Marcus thinks this time he could be out of pocket, but it turns out not everybody knows the answer. Which is of course “from the number 1 in the SERP for “poker”. Just ask Google who they trust, and that’s number 1.

Q from the audience – I have a German site and I’m building links from the UK – good or bad?

Sebastian – try to keep a 70/30 rule (70 being the country of origin). Be careful of link brokers here.

Christoph – A link has to pass the smell test. A site in a different country and a different language might make perfect sense; just thing about it logically, naturally and factor relevance.

Q from the audience – How does Google determine relevance? e.g. is “Sportsbook” related to “poker”?

Sebastian – don’t think of Google as a fancy sophisticated bit of .php. Google has been trying for years to emulate human behaviour. Human interpretation of relevance is probably much wider than a machine interpretation.

Ralph – points out that there are linguistic tools available that can assist with this. Also, do bear in mind that text around your anchor text is not ignored. Don’t drop a link with anchor text into a completely irrelevant paragraph.

In summary: Don’t obsess over any one factor in your link-building strategy or you risk losing sight of the whole. Don’t be too timid in this industry or you will sink. Don’t be too rigid or inflexible in your approach or behaviour. Make sure you don’t stink.

It is good practise to have your own customised error page, which is in your own template look and feel, as this provides a consistent user experience and allows you to communicate a suitable message; whilst being in control of that message. Additionally if you don’t create a formal process for errors of this nature you may risk how well your site is perceived by search engines.

Most search engine optimisation and usability experts will recommend you have a customised error page that makes some apology to the user, explains in basic terms what has happened, and suggests some useful and popular content or pages to visit as an alternative. Tip: Don’t reference “404″ in the page content as it is meaningless to the user.

Here’s what we do, which seems to work for us :

Example of a customised error page

Whilst all of this is professional and does something to rescue a poor user experience; for a commercial website, this is a missed opportunity. Make the most of your error pages by turning what could have potentially been a poor user experience into a commercial opportunity by creating a commercial error page.

Tips for Creating a Commercial Error Page

1. Start by doing some simple analysis into your most popular products and pages with highest conversion rates.

2. Do your research first, and if your are a new site, wait a couple of months to get some statistically meaningful performance data.

3. Don’t just put your most expensive products on the page, as this may look hollow and may not convert at all. Wait until you have some interaction and conversion rate data beforehand.

4. Identify top 3 to 10 products and present them in the error page content.

5. Identify top converting pages and explain what these pages are, asking if they might be of interest to the user.

6. Put your search box on your error page.

7. Optimise your error page by testing performance of different products.

8. Analyse the visitor route to error and see if there is a pattern or commercial inference to be made.

Here’s the best commercialised error page I’ve ever seen.

Best Commercial Error Page We Have Seen

Note the friendly and apologetic intro, the huge search box in prominent position, and the placement of the trendy, popular and celebrity-fave footwear items. This brand is working hard to make me like them and to get my business.

It’s worth saying that I was surprised to find a huge number of giants in online retail with a lot of opportunity to increase commercial usability and user experience, by improving on their current solution. Such as ASOS and their automatic redirect to the homepage , Argos and their complete lack of customisation and possibly the biggest surprise of all was Amazon and their slightly formal and completely non-commercial message; which for a web retail giant like Amazon, could be a considerable bit of scooping up to be done. (As you have gathered, I didn’t need to look past ‘A’ to find a surprising amount of missed opportunity.)

Automatic re-direct to home

Er... Where Am I?

Mal Function

Kudos to Zappos for leading the field. Do please let me know if you come across any really good or really bad error pages in the comments!

If Immanuel Kant was alive today, I think he’d be an SEO on the side. I think the combination of knowledge fuelled by common results of repeated experimentation, combined with the all- too- common Cartesian doubt (did we really drop a place – or did they gain a place) would seriously appeal to him.

So, it is with some sense of compassion that I wanted to reference this hilarious Google result for the search term “Google Ireland”. Have a look at the top ranking results…

Notes on a small Ireland

How good is that?

Maybe someone did a misspell in the meta keywords, cos – like New Zealand is an Ireland, right? Of course the search engines don’t use meta-keywords to inform the ranking algorithm though.

Regardless. My point is that SEO is an inexact science, though we can use learned inferences and experimentation to support our hypotheses, but when all is said and done – even Google can fall foul of their own algorithm.

Diddums.