How can you make your LinkedIn Profile a little more friendly for people — and for search engines?

It’s easy.

Don’t use the default “My Website” or “My Blog” when entering the address of your website or blog!

Instead, use “Other” — and type in short and descriptive “anchor text” that tells your audience more precisely where the link is leading them.

Here’s a 1 minute, 12 second video that shows you exactly how to make your profile a little more search engine — and audience friendly.

If the above video isn’t loading fast enough, you can watch it at YouTube.

Three business people asked me the same internet marketing question within a month, so I reckon this warrants a blog post! The question, roughly translated, is this:

Hey! My stats show that I’m not getting as much search engine traffic as I did a few months/years ago! I’m still in the top 10 for most of my favorite keyword terms, so what gives?”

What gives at the search engines? Generally, a decline in search-generated visitation (when your search positioning hasn’t changed!) can indicate one of two situations:

1. Your industry keywords aren’t as popular as they were before. This can be seasonal — a quick look at Google Trends for the keyword phrase “tulip festival” shows that searches for this term tend to spike in spring and all but disappear in autumn. Naturally!

Other than a decline from seasonal search, you might have to face a harder truth: your products or services may be in market decline. For example, as new technologies become more popular, searches for the term “iPod Shuffle” became less popular. You’re still likely to see “iPod Shuffle” searches spike during the holiday shopping season — but probably nothing like what we saw in 2005.

So ask yourself: is your product seasonal? Or is your product or industry in decline? Because if the answer is “yes” — of course you’re going to get less visitation from the search engines for your search terms!

But if the answer is, “no” — you’ll have to face findability fact #2…

2. People are expanding internet search far beyond Google. Vertical search is certainly becoming more popular. By vertical search, I mean search by industry or topic area. For example, back in 1999 or 2000, you might have thought of “Google” to begin an online “used car” search. Not anymore! Today, you might be more likely to think, “Autotrader.com” to begin your online search for a used car. Notice how the gap narrowed — then crossed. Autotrader.com did not squander its search engine capital — and successfully branded themselves as a top site in automotive vertical search.

Aside from vertical search, social media and other valuable information/networking sites are also fragmenting the amount of searching that your audience performs at Google. When I want to get advice about new products, for example, I find that I am more likely to ask my friends on Twitter or FaceBook or LinkedIn for their advice on where to go and what to try. Google has become my second choice.

Google is becoming the second — or third — choice for many online researchers and buyers as they look for information to help make purchasing or business decisions. If you notice that you’re spending more of your budget and time on search engine marketing for your website — and getting less of a return — it’s certainly time to take a look at your overall findability strategy!

It’s not 1999 anymore! There’s more to findability than Google and Yahoo! Update and diversify your findability strategy for 2008. Vertical search and social media may become an important part of your overall findability and engagement plan.

I’ve been noodling with the delightful Wordle.net application for a few months now. Initially, I used Wordle to create word clouds that I use as art in PowerPoint presentations.

For example, I entered my opening remarks on a presentation about Social Media for Business, and Wordle generated a unique and relevant welcome slide image. The main subject of the presentation “pops” — with supporting words adding meaningful visual subtext.

Two More Reasons Web Marketers Will Love Wordle. Since my initial Wordle experiment, I’ve managed to find two other terrific web marketing uses for this simply delicious product:

1. Try the Eye-Popping Web Copy Exercise. On occasion, prospects will call to tell me that they’re all about “enter product / service here“. When I go to visit their websites, however — I often struggle to find any words that support their claims! So, when I enter web page copy into Wordle — and the name of the product doesn’t “pop” — I have a visual demonstration of a potential copy writing problem that may be damaging to web marketing success. Try this exercise with your own website!
2. Dig the Most Amazing Brand Exercise Ever. Ah, the pricey “brand brainstorming” mission. Ad agencies generate Scotch-fueled words to present as your new corporate “vision and values statement” or “the cornerstone of brand messaging”. Rubbish. Instead of disconnecting from your customers, use your customers’ very words to discover your REAL brand image, as it exists today. Pump your latest testimonials and product reviews into Wordle. Which words pop? (That’s your real brand, not something made-up and wildly out-of-touch with reality.)

Brand Reality Check. As a personal example, I popped in my LinkedIn recommendations and a few offline testimonials I’ve received for my own, personal “Laura Bergells Brand” reality check. You can see the results below. I’m a smidge dismayed by the hugeness of the word “work”. I always thought my work product appeared playful and effortless.

Turns out, I’m delusional.

I’m also alarmed that the word “creative” is absent — but the words “hand” and “months” are in there — eh? It appears I have some work to do on my image!

Sales psychology 101. If you use your customers’ words in your messaging, you’re more likely to resonate positively with your audience. You’ll be in harmony. You’ll also appear more authentic and credible. Trustworthy.

All these qualities are important for online marketing!

What creative uses have you found for using Wordle? If you have a Wordle brand exercise or other creative use you’d like to share, point me to it!

For the past few years, at least one of my websites comes up in the top ten at Google Local Search for the phrases “internet marketing Grand Rapids” or “web marketing Grand Rapids”. Take my Maniactive.com blog, for instance:

Now, this is a good thing. After all, I specialize in internet marketing. And I work in Grand Rapids, MI.

So why wouldn’t I (or any local business!) take advantage of a free & easy listing at Google Local?

(Note: quite a few of my local competitive colleagues aren’t there, which makes me skeptical about their online marketing abilities! Anyhoo…)

Here’s a fact: not too many people search for those particular terms. But the ones who do are usually pretty valuable to me. They’re looking for something very specific. And I get a few calls a month from this free listing, so it has a high ROI.

How times change! Earlier this year, I received a phone call from a local businessman who inquired about my web copy writing service. He told me he did a search for “internet marketing Grand Rapids” and up popped my name.

“Ah, Google,” I said.

“No, LinkedIn,” he said. “I’d never use Google to find a professional.”

What a quote! Turns out, by using LinkedIn, this businessman found out that “his people knew my people.” (How Hollywood!)

But my transparent personal and business connections increased his trust factor. Aside from my profile and recommendations, it was his personal connection to me that made him pick up the phone.

Conversely, by viewing his information and connections on LinkedIn, I quickly discovered that this was a person I wanted to meet.

We did lunch. (How Hollywood!)

LinkedIn works both ways, y’see.

Earlier this month, I wrote about the decline in search volume at Google for the term “real estate agents”. While this is a very general, non-local example, web findability trends for professional services are definitely changing.

Peer-to-peer and word-of-mouth recommendations are much more meaningful.

In 2008, instead of thinking SEO or “Search Engine Optimization” — think again.

Think “findability”.

Think “trust”.

Social media is changing your internet marketing mix.

How are you preparing for the change?

Keep a simple log for one week.

Call it “My Google Search Log”.  Just jot down all the searches you did at Google for a one week period.

Now, let’s say your week has passed by. (My, that was fast!)

What’s on your log?

photo credit: vice48sr5005

Dozens of searches phrases? Hundreds maybe?

Now scan the list.

How many times did you approach Google with the idea of buying something?

(Not very many, I’ll guess.)

Most of the time, I reckon you went to Google looking for information.

And when you went to the sites that Google served up as plausible answers to your question — how’d that work out for you? And just how relevant were the answers you received?

A few days ago, the TechCrunch blog noted that keyword search is hitting the breaking point in terms of usefulness.

Glance at your Google log, and think about it.

How relevant is search for your company’s particular market niche? How well are those visitors converting into conversations?

Another quick exercise: go to Google Trends, and enter your company’s most precious keyword phrase. For an example, I’m going to enter “real estate agents“.

You’ll note that the search volume for this phrase — at Google alone — has gone down over 100% (from 2004 to 2008). In four years!

That’s a dramatic decline! If you’re a real estate agent, you can’t afford to rely on search alone to develop leads in a declining market.

The online audience looking for Realtors isn’t using “Search Engines” as much as they were in 2004. And they won’t be coming back anytime soon!
So, where might the search audience have gone?

Well, you might argue that in this economy, hardly anyone is looking for a Realtor anymore. (It’s not true, but if you want to argue, go ahead.)

So those who DO want to find a Realtor — why aren’t they using search engines?

I can think of two reasons –

1. Many real estate sites worked on building their online brands and marketing systems when search WAS hot. They did not squander their search capital! Once you found a solid agent site through the search engine, the agent and their marketing approach made themselves memorable. They provided you with a great experience and service. The next time you needed an agent, you didn’t go to the search engines — you went straight to the source that hooked you up with a great agent.
2. Search engines don’t do a satisfactory job of answering relationship questions. You’re not just searching for a “Grand Rapids real estate agent” — you’re searching for one you can trust! Social media plays like FaceBook and LinkedIn answer the relationship, referral, and trust questions — much better than search engines can. The Real Estate Zebra posts that real estate agents who don’t invest in social media will quickly become irrelevant. The same is true for any service professional.

You still have time. Search isn’t irrelevant — yet.

When people visit your site, ask yourself 3 questions:

• What are you doing to make your company memorable?
• How are you building trust and relationships?
• And what are you doing to continue the conversation with your visitors?

Don’t squander your search audience!

Glance up at the address bar. You’ll see a date in this blog’s lengthy URL.

If I had it to do all over again — I would not put dates in my blog URL. It’s too late for me now — too much work to go back and 301 re-direct 100′s of pages. But when I start new blogs: I cannot recommend putting dates in the URL.

Aaron Wall, author of the extremely helpful SEOBook writes an article for Search Engine Land , explaining the four reasons why he doesn’t like dates in URLs. I agree wholeheartedly. Better looking. Better search…

Not that I have regrets or anything: but if you’re starting a new blog, skip the dates. 

The time to decide if search engine traffic is important to your business is before you build a website.

Before.

Not after.

Before you hire anyone to build a web presence for your business, make sure you (at least) read the Google Webmaster Guidelines for developing a site! There’s more to understand than just the Google guidelines, of course — but why not at least start with a checklist of what Google tells us what they want — and don’t want — to see?

Get rudimentary advice from the horse’s mouth, so to speak?

That way, when you solicit proposals for web development, you’ll know if your designer, developer, or ad agency has a clue about how to design with search in mind!

Be warned! Most of the time, there’s no “tweaking” the code of an inappropriately developed site. (And no, adding meta tags after-the-fact to a Flash website won’t help! Sorry, stuck-in-the-90′s Ad Agencies!)

Further, by following the guidelines, you’ll be more likely to build a site that resonates with an increasingly web-savvy, socially connected audience. And you’ll be more likely to build on a platform that will let your ideas spread, grow, and flourish — instead of sitting alone and unnoticed by your very best online prospects and customers.

When naming web pages and photos, don’t drive yourself nuts! Stick to this easy, consistent, powerful 2-part formula.

1. All lower case words
2. Dashes between words

Free your mind! This simple, easy-to-remember naming technique can actually free your mind, so that you have time to apply your creativity to more meaningful areas of business development!

And what’s more — using this simple naming convention has three HUGE marketing and web development benefits:

1. Most people tend to search using all lower case. By using all lower case keyword phrases, you align your site with how most people behave. Further, most search engines have a harder time indexing CamelCase (first word capitalization) than the simple lower-case-with-dashes. Most search engines treat dashes as word separators. And really – when was the last time you typed ALL CAPS? If all caps is considered screaming in IM land: it’s screaming on your website, too!

2. The search engines can easily crawl lower case and dashes. Historically, underscores have been problematic for Google searches. Further, any spaces you leave in file names get automatically converted to the very ugly and unmemorable %20. Instead of a nice, clean “my-picture.jpg” you’ll get a “my%20picture.jpg”. Not pretty! And not easy-to-remember…which leads me to point 3:

3. Eliminate coding nightmares. If you start combining all sorts of naming techniques, things can get really ugly! You start wasting your time and creativity. For example, I sat with two folks last week who were trying to link to their images. As they were coding, I heard them talking out loud — it went something like this:

Let’s see: what combination of caps, spacing, dashes, or underscores did I use? Was it myPicture.jpg or My-Picture.jpg? Maybe it was my%20Picture.jpg? Oh, bother. Broken link. That must not be it…

What an aggravating, unnecessary hassle! Stick to the dashes and lower case. The search engines will love you. And you can surely use your creativity for something more meaningful than naming a file. Free your mind!

There’s a difference between the name of a blog page and the title of your post. And it’s an important distinction.

The title of this post is “How to Shorten WordPress Page Names with Post Slugs”.

If you click on the title of this post, you will see the name of the page in the URL bar. The name of this page is:

 /shorten-wordpress-page-names/

Usually, WordPress automatically takes your page title and makes it your page name…which can be a search engine friendly thing to do. But it can also be a problem, because…

Long titles that appeal to people might not appeal to search engines. And short titles that appeal to search engines might not appeal to people. 

Long, descriptive titles that get converted to long page names look spammy — which defy your search engine efforts. And short “keyword only” titles don’t appeal to people.

When you have a long title that appeals to PEOPLE — but not to search engines — use the WordPress Post Slug.

Shorten your page name to three-five descriptive words, and type it into the “Post Slug” area before you hit “Publish”.

Couldn’t be easier — or friendlier!

For years, this little Battractive.com site has had a Google Page Rank of 4. Today, you’ll see it’s a big old Google goose egg.

Page Rank ZERO. This happened about a month ago, a day or two after I upgraded my WordPress installation. It also coincided with a major Google update, which created all sorts of Blog writer speculation and general foo-fer-all.

I don’t do paid text links, or any of the other seedy practices that Google doesn’t like. (I kind of joke about paid links here. Lame joke, but still.) I give “dofollow” links — but only to regular, thoughtful commenters, which is fair game. There doesn’t seem to be any real reason for my decline in PR. It just “is what it is.” So I shrugged, and went on with my life.

Well, that was a month ago. I’m still at Zero. PR0, they call it.

But I don’t care that much. After all, in my entire November 2007 Goose Egg Month — my traffic’s still the same. Up a little, actually.

I think I would care if my paying customers came mostly from search engines. Or if I sold text ads where people demand that I pass on PR (supposedly, this is what caused the drop in the first place.)

Why did I shrug instead of freak out? I understand that Google can be like a tempermental teenager, concerned more with popularity than quality. And like every teenage girl knows, it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks of you.

If you’re cool, you’re cool. You’ll have your own devoted fans who will not only visit you, but keep coming back.

And Google? Once Google understands how popular you are, it will come crawling back. Just like any shallow teenager.

And if they don’t, so what? When you have a diversified online marketing plan, the capriciousness of the Google updates will merely generate a shrug. People who hinge their entire marketing plans on Google may have temporary traffic — but not an ongoing, sustainable business. In fact, if those who rely entirely on Google for visitors don’t have a real online business at all.

In a way, they work for Google.

So how do you handle a Google Goose Egg? Diversify your marketing plan. Build your own fan club!

Don’t work for Google. Work for your fans.

Work for your customers.