So, you have a website. It looks good, works well, and is kept updated — great! But what else should you be doing on a regular basis to ensure its success?

Google Webmaster Tools is a free service provided by Google that will help you to see the “big picture” of how your site exists on the web and how you can improve both its presence and performance. To get started, log in with any Google Account. You’ll need to add your site and complete a brief verification process. Then you’re ready to go.

Here are a few things you can accomplish through Webmaster Tools:

Learn about Incoming Traffic

Understanding the intentions of incoming visitors will help you to make sure they have a positive experience on your site.

• View Top Search Queries shows when and how your web site is appearing in Google search results. Which keywords display your site the most? Which result in click-throughs? Learning the answers to these questions (and identifying the differences between them) will help you to ensure that your site’s content meets the needs of incoming traffic. If certain keywords are missing from the list or ranked lower than you would expect, you may need to add more content to your site related to that keyword and ensure that others are linking to it.

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Much has changed since humanity acknowledged the word knowledge and started to classify the various subject matters into categories and taxonomies of learned disciplines.
The definition of knowledge is outside the scope of this article because of simple reasons. I am not as qualified as the university professors, or librarians who pour their blood, toil, trouble, and tears into the understanding of knowledge and wisdom.

What I do know about is what knowledge is online. Since Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Yes. He was knighted.) created the World Wide Web to link documents together on the then nascent Internet, knowledge became more than monolithic documents or books that were linked loosely via citations and references. Instead of specifying in APA, MLA, Chicago, or Turabian style where the source of a particular knowledge was, one could directly link it using something called “HyperText”, or what some know as “Hyper Text Markup Language”. Today, all websites that you see online are built with a combination of HTML, some JavaScript, and possibly some Flash or Java.
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Sometimes a client needs a change.  When you’re talking about websites, that change can be the whole enchilada: a new (or first time!) content management system, a comprehensive content audit with audience matrices and  IA work, a big build with tons of new functionality.  Or it might just be a creative design refresh with some minor tweaks and enhancements,  resulting in the appearance of a major revision at a lower cost and quicker implementation — the website facelift.

A website’s search can be similar.  Many clients we talk to are convinced that their site search doesn’t work and needs to be torn out — and sometimes that’s true.   We can gut the whole works, put in a new Google Mini or MS Search Server, spend hours dividing your site into collections, setting up separate searches based on audiences or site sections, but that’s not always necessary.  As a counterpart to the website facelift, the site search facelift seeks the same result: more for less.  How? By applying lessons from your search metrics, particularly what the top search terms of people seeking information at your site are and then making specific corrections to content.

While a site search facelift has several techniques to improve results, one of the easiest steps you can take to improve search results is to review frequent search terms and provide recommended links through your search engine for those terms.  The term used is dependent on the search engine, but is commonly referred to as “best bets” or “suggested results”.

Perhaps your search engine doesn’t make those frequently searched for terms reports available? Don’t have that data in the first place? Don’t be so sure – if you’re using Google analytics, most of the time that information is available to you irrespective of your search engine technology.

The best thing about this method is that it generally follows the 80/20 rule where 80% of your searches are coming from 20% of the search terms people use.  Start with the terms most frequently searched form and you are automatically handling the search results in the order that will gain the most benefit from clear, recommended content suggestions.  And while there’s a lot more to a full search facelift, this is a quick way to get some significant results.

There’s no doubt that Google is the search engine for most of the Internet.  Over the past few years, the big G has taken almost all of the growth in the search business (90% according to the linked source). And when vendors speak of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), they are recommending practices that are tantamount to Google Engine Optimization.  And why not? Most website administrators looking at their search referrals can plainly see why that’s where to put your effort in.

With the recent agreement between Yahoo and Microsoft making MS Bing the search platform for all of Yahoo’s sites, there’s now a new wrinkle in the SEO game.  Take the two numbers in your referral logs for Bing and Yahoo, combine them together — big enough to matter now? Especially with MS pushing the technology everywhere it can?  Right now you’ll continue to have traffic from both Bing and Yahoo, but moving forward, most sites will only have to optimize for a single additional search engine in the #2 position — Bing.

If you decide Bing is worth watching, try out these tips on optimization.  Remember – SEO is always a bit of black magic rather than hared science, but the rewards can definitely be worth the effort.

Recently, there’s been a proliferation of url shortening services, driven largely by Twitter’s 140 character limit and the need to keep links as short as possible to fit in your tweets.  They are run on websites with names like bit.ly and tr.im, as well as the classic tinyurl.com.  As a user of the internet, I have a serious dislike of these cryptic little URLs, and I went searching to find out if they came with other problems I hadn’t thought of, especially problems for SEO.  It turns out that they’re not as bad as I suspected, but they do have some serious downsides (some even say they’re evil).  If you’re trying to make a name for your nonprofit in social media, these are issues you’ll want to watch out for.

Shortening urls provides some important benefits to the person sharing the link, which is why they’ve become so popular.  Aside from taking up less space (thus making them more tweetable), many of the services provide tracking data, giving you details about how your content is being used.  That can be really fun for the casual user, and valuable for organizations.  Some people think they look tidier than long urls.

But there are two (or maybe three) other parties affected by the shortened url, and they aren’t so well served by it. (more…)

Microsoft quietly launched their free Microsoft Search Server 2008 product earlier this year as a product that heavily leverages the same Enterprise Search technology found in their Sharepoint 2007 product. That quiet introduction belies the fact that Search Server is directly poised to take on the de-facto market leader in low cost website spidering and searching, the Google Mini. When the Mini was first launched it had a great price-point, the Google name, and a slew of glaring deficiencies that have now been largely patched out of existence. Search technology, which used to be the largest feature gap our company had to account for in implementations for content management systems without their own search provider, had started to become a new brainer – sometimes clients without the slightest idea what sort of technology to use for a website redesign were coming to us with a Mini already purchased. That is, until MS Search Server 2008 arrived, immediately becoming the Mini’s foremost competitor in the low and mid-tier market and presenting a compelling case for those clients already heavily invested in Microsoft technology.

Right now, we’re in the midst of a website redesign that utilizes Search Server 2008. It’s a pretty common type of redesign for us at Beaconfire – a website built on a content management system that doesn’t have a built-in search technology, or at least not one we want to use. The client’s search needs are also pretty typical for a lot of site builds:

1. The search is primarily targeted at the site being redesigned – federated searching of external content might be a plus but takes a back seat to getting good search results for the site the user is searching on.
2. The focus in on public HTML content, not documents or database items, and there’s little in the way of heavily role-based content restrictions
3. The need for advanced filtering is minimal but needs to be expandable for the future
4. The search is fully integrated into the main website. The search and the results returned are displayed seamlessly in pages on the site instead of shuttling users off to another server.
5. Emphasis is placed on returning the best results possible through keywords and “best bet” mechanisms

Those requirements result in what is decidedly not an Enterprise level of search, but a very good example of the type of search plenty of customers want in a redesign – not a fancy search, just a particularly smooth and relevant one.

With those requirements in mind, here’s the my quick take on how the two technologies stack-up based on my impressions with both, right after the jump. (more…)

A recent post on the Official Google Blog provided an interesting look into how ads are stacked up on the right side of your Google searches (and on the content network):

In the general case, where ad qualities differ, the price an advertiser pays for a click will depend on its Quality Score relative to the quality of the ad below it in the auction. Roughly speaking, an ad that has twice the quality of another ad will tend to get about twice as many clicks, and will only have to pay half as much per click as the competing ad.

This is an important departure from what some consider the conventional wisdom with regard to search engine marketing: that the way to get a lot of views and clicks is to bid high for each word and work hard to convert on the flipside. Rather, this suggests that since ads with a higher quality score will win more often and cost less per click, it’s more important that you provide a high quality ad on a few of the most relevant keywords than to cast a wide net to keywords that are only tangentially related and lower your overall quality scores.

I’ll go into some tips on how to boost your quality score, and, by extension, the effectiveness of your SEM program, below the fold…

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It’s 10:00 pm, do you know where your AdWords are (pointing)? No, not another campaign ad, but a question that non-profits should be asking themselves in light of a new Google policy regard AdWords and redirects. According to their help center (emphasis mine),

Based on feedback from both our advertisers and users, and consistent with our efforts to present relevant results, we’ll no longer allow certain exceptions to our display URL policy. These include, but aren’t limited to, redirects and vanity URLs. In line with our existing policy, we’ll continue to require that your ad’s display URL matches its destination URL (the URL of your landing page). This policy will be strictly enforced for new ads, regardless of previous exceptions.

What this boils down to is that you can no longer send users to a different domain than the one you use in the display URL. This means, for users of many popular CRM systems, that you’ll have to display the name of your CRM instead of your organization in the your ad, if your donation or advocacy page is located there.

While it may be bad for non-profits, it’s overall a sensible policy. What likely happened is one too many ads pretended to be useful information like you’d find in organic search, only to turn around and be a business site. For example an ad for “XBox start on fire again?” with a display URL that says Microsoft would seem to be a public service announcement that would tell you what to do about it (hint: it involves a fire extinguisher). But what if that link went to Best Buy instead so you could buy a replacement? Google is doing what’s best for their users.

One way around this restriction is to send users to a landing page first instead of directly going to your advocacy or fundraising pages. This will also let you create a reinforcement of the text of your ad and help users get to the right page next. While you want to minimize the number of clicks to completion to minimize drop-off, a well written and formatted landing page can keep people from bouncing off and increase conversions.

The new AdWord rules are going to require some creative responses by non-profits and other marketers, but it’s worth examining carefully how you’ll build your ads. With the display URL comprising one quarter of your AdWord, you can’t afford not to have this vital reinforcement of your brand. I’ll be interested to see how major CRMs to help them make their ads effective. For more on the policy, and answers to your questions about it, check out the AdWords Google Group.

I love Hip-hop. Almost as much as I love Standards-compliant XHTML/CSS and its intersection with Search Engine Optimization. Mix the two together and you just can’t stop my head from bobbing. Enter The Poetic Prophet with “Design Coding”:

Happy Spamiversary! Fifteen years ago today, the term "spam" was coined by Joel Furr, referring to an accidental auto-posting of 200 messages to a Usenet group. Today, the term has become so common, it ranks as the second disambiguation on Wikipedia and is estimated to cost Americans more than $13 billion per year (That’s enough to fund the state of Utah).

While spam used to be confined to the world of email, spammers have recently branched out to new frontiers: blogs, social networks, and search engines. It seems that no online garden can stay a spam-free Eden forever (perhaps an inapt metaphor: the apple represented knowledge, not pharmaceuticals).

What all these techniques have in common is that they put practically the entire cost onto the recipient. While direct mail, junk faxes, and robocalls at least have a cost to the sender, all the methods of spam that I discuss here are pretty much free, once you have the system set up for delivery.

More on these new theatres of spam warfare below the fold:

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Google ads are just the latest front in the escalating online war fought between the campaigns this election season. While adwords were still maturing last cycle, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how they’ve evolved in an era of search engine marketing consultants and near ubiquity of online advertising.

First, the ground rules: last month, Google posted on their policy blog about their guidelines for political ads:

• Editorial Guidelines. Like all AdWords ads, political ads must follow our editorial and content policies (including our trademark policies)…

• Fairness. We permit political advertisements regardless of the political views they represent, and apply our policies equally…
• No attacks on an individual’s personal life. Stating disagreement with or campaigning against a candidate[...] is generally permissible. However, political ads must not include accusations or attacks relating to an individual’s personal life, nor can they advocate against a protected group.
• Donations. If you’re soliciting political donations, your ad’s landing page must clearly state that the donations are non-tax-deductible.
• No misleading ads. As with all AdWords advertisements, political ads should not mislead users.

These policies seem remarkable even-minded and fair, as people have come to expect from Google. With these guidelines in mind, follow me below the fold for an analysis of the search engine marketing strategies of the 2008 presidential campaigns…

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Web video has exploded over the past few years. The perfect storm of YouTube (and other video sharing sites), cheap video camcorders, rapidly growing broadband adoption (pdf), and a seemingly endless number star-wars kids and dogs on skateboards has created a web where video is becoming ubiquitous. Even long-term internet staples, like The Onion and MLB.com have added video content. And while some ISPs are arguing (pdf) that their tubes can’t handle the bandwidth from online video (an argument that is, incidentally, specious (pdf)), there’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle with regard to online video.

That having been said, for all that online video can do – illustrate something better seen than read, empower users to create their own content, or destroy politicians with their own words – it has its weaknesses. In particular, video’s not great for skimming or sampling, it’s tough to reference, and can be tricky to pass around at the office or classroom (well, unless you’re our office – these three videos got quite a bit of play at Beaconfire last week). In addition, it can be tough to search a video library for a particular section – particularly if it’s an audio reference, searching may have to be done in real time.

MIT has found a way to mitigate this last problem, and they’re using their own video lectures as a guinea pig. From MIT’s technology review:

Announced last month, the MIT Lecture Browser website gives the general public detailed access to more than 200 lectures publicly available though the university’s OpenCourseWare initiative. The search engine leverages decades’ worth of speech-recognition research at MIT and other institutions to convert audio into text and make it searchable.

This is simply an amazing innovation. More on why this could mean an explosion for online video in the future below the fold.

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With only a few months until the Iowa Caucus, the annual marathon of political ads is almost upon us. This year, more than ever before, the air war is coming online as both sides trade web versions of TV ads, and some ads will inevitably pick up enough earned media buzz to reach more people than they would have in a paid context.

While this is not new (look back at President Johnson’s "Daisy" ad for ancient viral video), this may be the first cycle that a search engine ad created a furor.

Google recently created a stir when they rejected ads by Sen. Collins’s campaign that slammed MoveOn. Google rejected the ads, according to Policy Council Pablo Chavez, not because of their political content, but because of a trademark violation:

Under our trademark policy, a registered trademark owner may request that its mark not be used in the text of other parties’ ads. Some time ago, MoveOn.org submitted a request to Google that its trademark not be used in any ads…

This all seems perfectly reasonable, but what does it mean for your ads? Follow me below the fold for thoughts on what you can do to make sure your ad gets through…

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I fielded a call yesterday about Goodsearch — whether this program by Yahoo! would be worthwhile for an organization to spend time marketing to their constituents.

I fall on the side of extreme caution on these kinds of programs. I’d lump this in with Amazon’s merchant reseller program among hosts of other “make money while your constituents use our store/technology.” With very few exceptions, I have yet to see organizations make net income from these programs that is commensurate with the value of their brand they use to market these programs. When you factor in staff time, the opportunity cost of using an email/newsletter story/print pieces to promote the opportunity, and the brand value you give away for free to promote these … among other investments … organization’s don’t reap what they sow.

Is Goodsearch different? Could it break the model? Maybe because it is a daily experience and utility people truly need, find useful and it’s a quality experience for the constituent. But, to pay off, organizations are going to have to invest a lot in promoting it to convince people to switch from Google.

Is that really the business our organization’s marketing and fundraising departments should be in … convincing constituents to switch from Google to Yahoo!?

If you haven’t seen Google’s Accessibility Search you should stop what you’re doing right now and take a look at where your site stacks up against the rest in your industry. Please note that at the moment this search engine is concerned with accessibility to the visually impaired only. I’m sure others will follow.

If you don’t see your site at the top of the search results page don’t worry. It could be something as minor as the term you searched, which may not be a META Tag or META Element in your HTML. This happens more often than not.

But it could be something major like not enough use of CSS or just plain bad code. If this is the case you’ve probably had the same Web site design for years and are just about ready to redesign.

Only this time you’ll have a tool to help you make certain your site’s on top of accessibility. :)

Cheers!

Google must have a pretty awesome viral marketing strategy. Or at the very least they must be sending some subliminal message through their tools that is turning us all into Google zombies who send around "here is another cool Google beta tool" emails ever so often.

So, from the Google zombie land, here is another cool Google beta tool: Google SMS (Short Message Service).

You can text message the number 46645 (GOOGL) with your search term and a Google-bot (I presume) responds back with the results as one or more text messages. You can search for local business listings, driving directions, movie show times, and more (Full list is here: http://www.google.com/sms/).

Once you have mastered the typing intricacies of your phone, this is a really cool and useful text messaging service with an almost immediate response. Lynn and I text messaged our search for “Beaconfire Arlington VA” and were pretty thrilled by Google sending us our own office address (I agree – we do need a life!). As an added bonus, we also discovered from the result that Google had not updated our office address after our move. Of course, that meant we had to sign up for the free Google business service to request a correction.

The only issue I have is that if there are multiple results for a search term, each will be sent as a separate message. Imagine searching for “Pizza Arlington VA” as Google suggests on its SMS page. Google SMS itself is free, but most phone providers charge by the number of text messages you send/receive. So, unless you have unlimited text message option from your phone provider, this approach can add costs over time. But, despite that, this is pretty cool service or did I say that already? ;-)

Google Zombie Signing Off.