Better Impressions and Click-through

1. Improving Findability & Using Google Analytics to Create and Measure Goals Better Impressions and Click-through Mark Keeler www.omegafuzzy.com

2. Introductions • Say “Hi” • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) sounds scary • Findability is a little more friendly. Let's use that instead • Google-centric today • It's the one that counts folks (this year) • Google's search share is 65% • Yahoo's share is 19.6% • Bing (Microsoft) 8.4% • http://www.businessinsider.com/bing-search-share-rises-again-in-july-2009-8 • http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223400081 www.omegafuzzy.com

3. Using Google Analytics High level overview Some key metrics Setting simple goals Other useful tools About our Session Today Designing for Findability • Plan • Content quality from a search perspective • How using Web standards helps • Some dos and don'ts www.omegafuzzy.com

4. A Little Background • The good news is you are on the internet! The problem is so is everyone else. • Can you say “Altavista” ?(Oh yeah they are still around, but who cares?) • Delivered Internet's first Web index in 1995 • First multilingual search capabilities on the Internet • 61 search patents • Google – It's not just about the keywords folks ! • It's also about who is linking to you • The next big thing(s) • Mobile Mobile Mobile • Integration of search and social media www.omegafuzzy.com

5. It's All About The Content • You want people to your site? Then you have to focus on the content • Make it compelling • Keep it fresh • Be search friendly • Measure your success/failures • Adapt • Today we focus on what makes “search friendly” content, setting goals and using basic metrics to determine if what your visitors find is compelling to them • Your position in search results is dynamic and requires maintenance via your content www.omegafuzzy.com

6. Some terms to know • Organic Search – The unpaid search results based on the keywords you provided • “Paid” Search (Adwords) – Paid search results typically found in the right hand side bar or the top of the search results page • Impression – A metric representing an instance when your site appears on the search results page • Click-through – A metric representing the act of clicking on the search result link (impression) to your page • “Snippet” - Google's term for the information (description or abstract) returned for a given site on the search results page • Site Links – Links presented as part of the snippet to other useful pages in a given site. Site links are generated by algorithm and may or may not appear for your page www.omegafuzzy.com

7. Let's keep it simple Decide on what you want your site to do (Inform, attract, educate, etc.) Decide who you want to attract to your site (your constituents, new members, unchurched, etc.) List what makes your church unique Choose some words that describe your church, it's mission, culture, etc. Determine what content becomes the priority and can you produce it? Start with a Plan What do you know? • Have you tried finding your church site without using it's prime keywords? • How do the search engines view your site? • Are visitors looking at what you want them to look at? • Has anyone linked to you? www.omegafuzzy.com

8. Understanding what will make your site search “friendly” www.omegafuzzy.com

9. Best Practices In A Nutshell • Use Web Standards when and where possible • Follow Progressive Enhancement principles by separating content from presentation and functionality • Use HTML to provide your content structure • Use CSS to define and deliver presentation • Javascript provides the enhanced functionality and experience • Design your content • Quality content that is clear, on topic and compelling • Keywords are used throughout the document structure • Provide descriptive text for Images, document links, Audio and Video • Server-side tricks/tips • URLs should not be cryptic and ideally use keywords you have identified • 404 Pages should not be “defaults” supplied by your server www.omegafuzzy.com

10. Web Standards • Represents Common “language” • HTML & XML • CSS • Javascript – It's an ECMA standard known as JavaScript • .pdf format is now a ISO standard(http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1141) • Following the standards yields benefits • Better cross browser compatibility • Better quality display on mobile devices • Accessibility compliance - Let's talk about this for a second! • You still have to follow the rules, it's not “for free” • Search engines are a lot like users who are blind or have poor eye sight. A poorly designed web site is confusing if not incomprehensible. • Neither will spend much energy trying to understand your web site. www.omegafuzzy.com

11. Progressive Enhancement • Follow Progressive Enhancement principles by separating content from presentation and functionality • Use HTML to provide your content structure • Use CSS to define and deliver the presentation format of your content • Javascript provides the enhanced functionality and experience and in many cases will provide the same value as proprietary technologies (Flash, Silverlight etc.) • Benefits • Your content and message will always be delivered • Search engines crawl (read) your site more easily • Graceful degradation • Assistive technologies (screen readers) interpret the site more quickly and easily • Easier site maintenance • Generally speaking it's less code www.omegafuzzy.com

12. Simple & Search Friendly Doc Structure • <head> <title> <meta name=”description” content=”your info here”> • <body> <h1> <div> <h2 - h6> <p> <table> <blockquote> <lists> <caption> (used in tables) Attributes: Alt Title www.omegafuzzy.com

13. Description Meta Tag • In 2010 only a few meta tags really count • “Description” - is how you tell Google what to present in the search snippet • “Revision” - can help search engines know when your site is updated • Description • Google looks for this meta information for the search snippet • Open Directory Project is queried if it can't find meta “description” or derive from page content (http://www.dmoz.org/) • MACUCC as our example • Google search snippet is derived from ODP (http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=macucc) • Yahoo search snippet pulls information from the home page and is less accurate • You control how the search snippets represent your pages! www.omegafuzzy.com

14. Design Your Content • Quality of writing • Write with people in mind first and search engines second • Who, What, Where, When, Why & How • Keywords • 7% rule – Keywords appear in naturally written language 7 words in 100 as a percentage of density • Higher density rates can cause search engines to become “suspicious” and negatively impact your search ranking • Too low a density and your site may not be well represented in search results • Other forms of content that need consideration • Embedded video (UCC, YouTube, etc.) • User Generated Content (forum or blog responses) • RSS feeds - your own or externally sourced (WordPress, UCC FeedBurner) www.omegafuzzy.com

15. Quality Within the Structure • Linking! - it's like Google gold • Inbound links vs cross-linking • Social networking sites like Facebook • Who is in your circle of supporters that have a website? • Headings & Attributes • <h1> - Google likes to see one top level heading • Don't rely on images only for your banners/mastheads. Image replacement techniques in CSS are a useful tool to maintain accessibility and findability • Keywords need to appear in your headings • Alt and Title attributes should also contain meaningful and relevant text • WordPress and other blogging systems • Build your own templates with lessons from this presentation in mind • Keywords need to appear in your post titles • Archive by topic not by date www.omegafuzzy.com

16. Images, Docs, Audio & Video • Images • Images give your site personality, heart and soul • Never present information in an image without also providing that same information in text • Use the “alt” attribute with every image – XML compliance requires this for accessibility • Downloadable Docs • MS Office is a market leader, not a standard • .PDF format is an ISO standard • MS Office and Open Office support .PDF format • Audio & Video • Provide text descriptions of the content • Consider including text transcripts www.omegafuzzy.com

17. Server Side Tricks and Tips • URLs • Domains – purchase a domain that is clear and memorable • Avoid complex directory structures or folder names that are cryptic • Page file names should contain keywords or relate to the topics contained within • Use hyphens rather than underscores in file names to separate keywords • 404 Page Not Found error pages • External sites may link back to old and discontinued pages • Site redesigns will cause search results to be out of sync for a time • Build your 404 error page to link back to your home page • Robots.txt • Tells search engines what to index and what not to index www.omegafuzzy.com

18. Practices to Avoid • Using Link Farms –very transparent to search engines • Table based layouts • Table based layouts can often be complex and may “confuse” search engines • Overuse may cause the document structure to become ambiguous • They are soooo 90's • Frameset designs • Frameset designs can make it difficult for search engines to follow links • You may need to provide a “no frameset” version of the site otherwise your pages may not be indexed – could be overhead you don't want • Reliance on Flash to deliver key content • Flash document hierarchy can be ambiguous or unreadable to search engines • You need to provide descriptive meta data in your Flash document properties (Description) • Flash development tools to convert .SWF to HTML can yield inconsistent results www.omegafuzzy.com

19. “Black Hat” Techniques • Villains and miscreants abound – Don't follow their examples • 6 basic techniques to shun • Keyword Stuffing – The act of loading content with an unnaturally high density of keywords with the goal of higher search results placement • Invisible text – Similar to above, but uses text of the same color as the background, generally with the purpose to mask keyword stuffing. Often used in an attempt to get the page to display in search results using a set of keywords which does not reflect the actual content • Cloaking – technique where one page is served to a search engine's bot while another page is presented to the human visitor. • Doorway Pages – Pages that contain little or no real information and which link or redirect the visitor to another page • Redirection – The act of automatically redirecting a user to another page using the meta “refresh” tag or scripting techniques • Spam – A page loaded with advertisements or “junk” content www.omegafuzzy.com

20. Google Analytics www.omegafuzzy.com

21. What is Google Analytics • A set of free tools that enable you to track and quantify web site traffic to your site • Helps you define a visitor profile for your site • Provides you with a means of understanding how visitors behave on your site • Shows what search terms (keywords) were used to find your site • Enables you to set goals and track your success/failures • Allows you to compare yourself to other sites of similar size or category www.omegafuzzy.com

22. A Few Considerations • Here are a few things you need to understand before jumping in with Google Analytics • Data is dynamic and changing all the time, just like your position in search results • Your data is used by Google to create benchmarking data • Requires you embed a small amount of Javascript in your page • Users who have Javascript or cookies disabled are not tracked. • My experience is that 12 - 15% of my visitors do not have Javascript enabled • I often use AWStats to verify or fill gaps in Google data • Google Analytics isn't going to be mastered in a night www.omegafuzzy.com

23. Other Tools • Google Analytics is just one tool available to you • Consider using these other free tools: • AWStats – server side suite available as part of the service plan of many hosting services. Available as a free download with basic features or for pay with advanced e-commerce features. Overlaps with Google Analytics in many ways • Webilizer – similar to above, but older and not as full featured. Distributed under GNU Public Use license • Google Webmaster Tools – Free service that provides information on your site from Google's search perspective. Impression statistics, crawl errors, keyword significance and links to your site are reported. • There are plenty of others ! www.omegafuzzy.com

24. Some Terms to Know • Visitor -A Visitor is a construct designed to come as close as possible to defining the number of actual, distinct people who visited a website. • Visit - A period of interaction between a visitor's browser and a particular website, ending when the browser is closed or shut down, or when the user has been inactive on that site for a specified period of time (30 minutes by default). • Bounce - Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. • Pageview - A pageview is an instance of a page being loaded by a browser. • Goals – Goals may be specific pages you want to have visited, a specific amount of time spent on a page, # of visitors or other setting allowed by Google Analytics • Conversion - A conversion is said to occur when a visitor reaches a goal - a page that is specified in the Goal Settings section of each profile. This goal page could be a purchase confirmation page, a "thank you for registering" page, a download page, or an online presentation. Source: Google Analytics Glossary : http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=11285 www.omegafuzzy.com

25. Let's Go Live To Google Analytics www.omegafuzzy.com

26. Resources • Slides: • http://www.omegafuzzy.com/nonprofit/macucc.htm Web Resources: • Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Version 1.1, 13 Nov 2008 http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html • SEO Marketing World:http://www.seomarketingworld.com/ • A List Apart:http://www.alistapart.com/ Books: • Walter, Aarron. Building Findable Websites. Berkeley: New Riders, 2008 • Cedarholm, Dan. Bulletproof Web Design. Berkeley: New Riders, 2008 www.omegafuzzy.com