If you’ve been to our Intro to Search Engine Marketing Class then you’ve heard us preached about how important the content is on your web site.  And because the search engines can not read images it is important that you pay extra close attention to them.

Image search is now the fastest growing vertical search next to contextual search.  It is more importantly for you to optimize your images now due to that Google launched its Universal Search.

So how can you optimize your images?

1. Robots.txt file: make sure the folder you are using to store your images is not blocked by the robots.txt file on your site.  A robots.txt file is a file that keeps the search engines from indexing your pages that you do not want spider.   
2. Image File Names: name your images that’s related to what they are.  If it is an image of a product, save it as that productname.jpg and not just a number from your camera. 
3. Use the Alternative Text Tag: this is a good place to put in keywords, but don’t keyword stuff it.   
4. Use Caption Below Image: because the search engines can not read images, it is helpful to have a small description on what the image is about. 
5. Add Images to Articles and Press Release: if you have an image on your article, press release or even blog post that is on your flickr account, link it out or you can have it linked back to your site.  The web marketing image above is from our site so it is linked to www.schipul.com.  Not only will it give credit for your image but also some link love.

Annisa Chan

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

A few of our clients are running Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns with Google’s AdWord program and it seems on a weekly basis the guru’s at Google are trying to better serve you and/or your money, depending how you look at it. One of the newest additions to the AdWords stable is the Conversion Optimizer (CO).

What is the Conversion Optimizer?

From Google

The Conversion Optimizer (beta) is an AdWords feature that manages your advertising costs around specific conversion goals.

What this means is you can specify how much money you want to spend on a conversion. This is set by determining your maximum Cost Per Acquisition or CPA. Once you set the amount the CO ‘manages your CPC (cost per click) bids for you, making adjustments and showing your ads only when you’re likely to get conversions.’

To some this sounds like an interesting concept, and it is. Who wouldn’t want to know that their ads are showing when someone is almost certainly going to convert? I know I would but all this automation leaves me a little uneasy. I like being to able to look at what words are converting, what ads are working and how I can better my chances at conversions. I’ve never been an auto-pilot type person but it does sounds intriguing. 

It’s always a gamble to play a ‘what if’ game like AdWords, some people win and some people lose but ‘What If’ you could pay only when someone converts? Google has that base covered too. It’s Pay Per Action (PPA) model lets you do just that – pay when someone completes a predetermined action. These actions can be making a purchase, filling out a contact form or signing up for a newsletter to name a few. You will only get charged when someone does what you want them to do. This is a great thing as most advertisers money goes down the drain when someone accidentally clicks on your ad and does nothing on your site. It sounds like a great concept.

If you’re thinking what I’m thinking you are wondering if there is a catch? There is, a couple actually. Currently PPA only runs on the Google Content Network. The ‘Google Content Network’ is the Google’s Adsense program, wherein your ads run on sites that opt in to having Google’s ads run on their site or blog. I’m sure you’ve seen them before, many well designed sites offset the price of hosting by placing Google’s ads on the site. Many times it interferes with the overall look of the site but if your ads are placed on the right sites it can work in your favor. Some people may see your ad on someone’s blog and use the blogs author’s integrity as a good indicator of whether they should click on your ad or not. You have some control over your AdSense ads but they can eat up your daily budget if your not careful.

The other catch is how many conversions you’ve had in a specific time frame. Even though Google’s mantra is ‘Don’t Be Evil’ it needs to protect it’s bottom line and investors so they’ve come up with a specific criteria to joining PPA. Google states you are eligible only if you’ve ‘received more than 500 conversions through a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) campaign in prior 30 days.’

This is where the investor interest comes in to play. If you aren’t a big time player in the game they don’t want you. Remember Google is the one that collects all the money so if you aren’t generating much then they don’t want to help you help them.

The Conversion Optimizer is much the same, ‘your campaign must have received at least 300 conversions in the last 30 days.’ This can leave a lot of folks on the outside looking in.

Of course if you’re doing your SEM and SEO right all this shouldn’t matter

So where does that leave us? Well for the small potatoes business we’ll still have to battle it out on the front lines, using our brains and cognitive thinking to outwit the other guy. For the big time players – Welcome to the ‘Members Only’ club. Grab a cigar and a brandy and don’t worry about a thing – Google is now going to choose how to spend your money for you.

Jason McElweenie 

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com

Last post we talked about Meta Tags descriptions and keywords and we left off telling you that you can be penalized for stuffing your keywords. Some of you in SEM know this but most of our clients don’t. There is some gray area so let’s do some digging and find out what the rules are.

Here is Google’s official statement on keyword stuffing

"Keyword stuffing" refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results. Filling pages with keywords results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.

To fix this problem, review your site for misused keywords. Typically, these will be lists or paragraphs of keywords, often randomly repeated. Check carefully, because keywords can often be in the form of hidden text, or they can be hidden in title tags or alt attributes.

O-K? A little ambiguous but it’s a start. Google’s keyword statement leaves some room for interpretation and it’s this type of thing that can get you in trouble. It does say that ‘Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of loading a webpage with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google’s search results’ but surely there must be some clearer indication of what this means. It doesn’t say how many keywords I can use or should I use all of my sites keywords on every page or should I use page specific keywords – keywords that only show up in the content of that page and nothing else. It doesn’t mention using keywords that aren’t specific to my page, like Paris Hilton or iPhone. Hmm, let’s do some more investigating.

One place we found some clearer information was a post on SEO Consultants. They state;

"Use a "keyword" meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page."

Now we’re getting somewhere! If you are going to use keywords in your meta tag make sure that they are evident in the body copy of the page. Avoid site specific keywords for every page. Also, do not add any spammy words like Paris Hilton or iPhone if your page has nothing to do with either of them. So we have our answer, short and sweet – to the point!

To SEM folks like us at Schipul this type of information is common knowledge but as we see it takes some investigating to find out what the rules are.

This type of ethical Search Engine Optimization or SEO is called White SEO. The practice of stuffing your keywords is called Black Hat SEO and can work for you in the short term and can generate attention. This will most likely be a bad thing as we see below.

In a post on Matt Cutts blog, head of the Google’s Webspam team, he points to a site by Alex Chiu and blatant body keyword stuffing. Below is a screeshot of Alex Chiu’s site.

He has added a small text area near the bottom of his page as shown in the screenshot to the right. This text area contains an insane amount of keywords, some that make sense ‘Circulatory System’, some that don’t  ‘Conservative Mission Wallpapers’. Chui’s keyword stuffing area represents about 50KB of keywords. Matt was kind enough to post them all for us. Just what is ‘Tupac Kazaa Hospital’? Who knows. Check out the list here.

This is the kind of stuff that can get you banned so don’t do it!

So in closing do things ethically and you will reap the rewards. Don’t keyword stuff, it’s bad.

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul – sem@schipul.com