The following is a guest post by Jim Kukral.

Google knows this. Now you do as well. Easy always wins. Take a moment and picture your website or your blog or your product or service in your head right now. Now, think of Google’s. Which one is easier? No, you’re not a search engine, you’re probably a small business owner with a variety of products services, entrepreneur with a business idea, or blogger . But the comparison remains because regardless of what it is you do easy will always win.

So keep thinking about your Web business. Is what you’re selling easy to buy? By that I mean; when somebody comes to buy from you, or to simply get information from you like a phone number or to download a white paper… is it easy to do? Or are you making it too hard?

Picture Google.com again in your head. It’s pretty darn easy, no? There’s a logo and a big input box underneath it. You put in what you’re looking to find, and hit search and boom, you find it. Easy. Google understands that customers use them for one reason, to have a problem solved, and therefore, that’s what they deliver, without all the frills that other search portals like Aol or Yahoo! try to offer.

Your opportunity right now is to figure out the main one or two reasons people visit your website, because despite what you might think, your customers probably have only those one or two things on their mind when they visit you.

If you visit the home page of Orbtiz.com, you’re probably there to do one of a few things only. Book a flight, find a car, or make a hotel reservation. Possibly all three at once. But honestly, that’s pretty much it, right? I would bet that 99% of their traffic is trying to do one of those things. The same goes for you and your website, blog, membership site or anything you produce online.

What exactly are your customers looking for? You need to find out and find out right now! Check your analytics (I recommend Google Analytics, it’s free! www.Google.com/Analytics) to find out things like the most viewed pages of your website, as well as the most exited pages too. You may find out that 90% of your visitors are focusing on the free white paper download page and ignoring the other pages you thought were important. That’s great news! Now, you at least know what your customers want. And now you can make it easier for them to get it. You may also find out that a large percentage of your visitors always leave your website on one specific page, giving you the insight that perhaps they aren’t finding what they’re looking for, getting frustrated, and surfing away. That’s bad.

So what should you do with that knowledge to make things easier for your visitor, and better for your business? If you’re getting a lot of traffic to your free white paper download, go ahead and take that download information and make it stand out on your home page. If done right, you’ll make it as easy as possible for your visitors to get what they were looking for, and you’ll see even more downloads, and happier visitors because you didn’t make them work so hard.

Now, you may also find out that the page you really wanted your visitors to see is not being viewed enough. This could be the specials page on your e-commerce site, or the packages page on your consulting site or maybe your customer support contact information page. Whatever it may be, once you know what it is, that page obviously needs to be viewed more, and while you can’t force it down your visitors digital throats, you can redesign your page so that it limits the other choices that can distract your visitor.

Make it easy and simple, then win!

For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money“, as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.

source

When you think of labor day what comes to mind? For me it is these 2 thoughts

• lower earnings because few people are online today
• since almost nobody is online, any hours worked today are me getting ahead of the market

Working hard & working long hours can almost be a disease…the web makes it easy to be addicted.

But for every person who is putting in hard work trying to help people there is another person selling image.

The big issue with the image game is the risks. As the lies pile up they corner people into a bad situation, to where they can (and do) lose everything.

If I had to take a single point of reference to help a stranger judge the difference between a hack and someone who wants to honestly help people, I would say it is this: do they encourage you to take on debt.

• If they do then there is a good chance they are the type of person who will go out of their way to screw you.
• If they do not then they are likely not a maximizer type (because if they were then they would be encouraging you to go into debt to sell you more stuff).

It is not that all debt is evil (when I got started online I was naive enough to start on a credit card), but life and markets are unpredictable. If I wasn’t smart enough to get a job to cover my 6 or so months of education before going full time online who knows where I would now be. What seems like a short term gain can lead to longterm failure. We are human, and so we are flawed. Wen you have debt/leverage you have no spare parts. So if something goes wrong you are done. Nassim Taleb spoke about the importance of savings and diversity of revenues as keys to survival, while noting that the very structure of our public markets encourages risk + leverage (options encourage short term performance & volatility rather than sustained growth, and you hope the guy on the next watch is stuck holding the Madoff ponzi bag).

The falls of past empires have typically been preceded by rapid inflation in food costs. Our food supply, like most other aspects of modern day life, has been so extended as to be poisonous. Fishes soaked in chemicals literally change sex back and forth, and shrimp in the ocean (with traces of Prozac) swim toward the light – where they get ate.

Its not about fixing the conversation. Its about filling in the blanks. If people are prone to click on something that is exactly what they will get, even if it is not something they want.

We misinform kids about sex in a way that can screw up the rest of their lives. Against the will of people data is collected so that they may be stalked and harassed. If you once thought you were fat in the past, long after becoming anorexic there will still be ads reminding you how fat you are, following you around the web.

When bits of culture die the life lessons wrapped in it fade as well. Sure there may be HTML codes for emotions, but (beyond ad targeting) it is hard to reduce people to number.

Is the push toward homoginization to increase yield and chasing the lowest common denominator making people happier or more miserable?

I realize that reading the above can quickly make me sound like some ultra left-winged hippie, but the point of this post is not a political one … rather one on the basic rule of law.

We justify (or downplay) harming ourselves, our environments, and the environments of other animals so we can have more and better. But to do this we often take on debt and leverage and put ourselves in precarious situations. Worse yet, we often have *others* decide to take on leverage for us, without our desire or permission.

Why is it that the government is over $1 trillion in bad mortgage paper? How can the government want to make housing cheaper / more affordable while simultaneously propping up (and thus ensuring overvaluation of) virtually the whole of the market? How can the government taking both sides of the same bet lead to anything but waste, fraud & abuse?

If you believe in efficient market theory then banking should represent a small portion of the profit pool (since banks are all dealing in the same commodity of cash). And yet the banking class keeps representing a growing portion of the profits, while the bad sides of their trades (the losses) are passed on to tax payers.

I don’t mind someone else levering up with risk so long as they have to pay the consequences of their failures. But capitalism without failure is like religion without sin.

These banks threatened tanks in the street if they didn’t get their bailouts.

They went so far as to say even auditing the Federal Reserve would threaten the financial system. Sorry, um, but that is exactly what the banking class did. If they are not punished for committing crimes then the lawlessness will only grow more extreme, as it has.

When the bubble popped some of these scammers, charlatans, shysters, swindlers, and tricksters claimed that “nobody saw it coming,” but in fact as things started to go wrong these folks leaned into it and made it worse.

Rather than having CDOs go unsold they engaged in self-dealing & kept mixing the bad chunks in, sorta like making new sausage out of old sausage. They knew what they were doing. They intended to commit fraud:

“On paper, the risky stuff was gone, held by new independent CDOs. In reality, however, the banks were buying their own otherwise unsellable assets.”
…
“One rival investment banker says Merrill treated CDO managers the way Henry Ford treated his Model T customers: You can have any color you want, as long as it’s black.”

Its labor day. The criminal bankers who ripped you off in the past, who are currently ripping you off with more crimes, and who will rip your children off are stealing your labor. And since neither political party cares to stop it its up to you how much you want to give…there is no end to how much they would love to take. Time for me to take a break.

source

Posted by RobOusbey

Today, I want to share two pieces of advice that are particularly useful to certain types of business – and will be exceptionally quick to implement. I’ve also created a free download that might help some people implement one of these ideas even more quickly.

About two years ago, I made a recommendation

WineGento is the best Magento Template to sell wines and other spirits. It’s optimized for all the browsers and for the main mobile platforms.

Even this Magento Template, like the other ones, includes a newsletter system based on html source, customized emails according to the graphic style of the theme and graphic sources in .psd format. Learn More

Get this extension…

The modul provides a large base of Computop payment services.
This includes:
• Computop CreditCard
• Computop DirectDebit
• Computop giropay
• Computop iDeal
• Computop DirectTransfer
• Computop mpass
• Computop PayPal
• Computop PayPal Express

Get this extension…

Posted by Dana Lookadoo

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

I’m going to speed through the 2nd half of the 1st day at the SEOmoz Pro Training Race Track. Recall that 9 speakers raced through topics covering clicks to conversions.The following are highlights of the end of the race for Day 1.

Posted by Dana Lookadoo

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Day 1 of SEOmoz Pro Training was like being at a race track. The course careened from clicks to conversions and from search results to landing pages. The audience watched 9 speakers drive their search marketing race cars at speeds faster than fingers can type. Given the finger-breaking speeds, it was fortunate all SEO fans were well fueled – beginning with a healthy breakfast buffet, mid-morning energy bars, lunch (more all-you-can-eat) and a scrumptious mid-afternoon pit stop with fresh cookies and treats. After everyone was fed each time, it was off to the races.

Todd Freisen was in the sports booth service as emcee, host of ceremonies, referee, judge and time keeper. The event was like a well-oiled machine. Maybe that’s why they call Todd, “Oilman.”

When I said “yes” to attending the Mozinar on a Press Pass, I didn’t realize I was going to be covering a sporting event. GoodNewsCowboy asked me how I was going to recap and condense this “wild ride.” I realized there was a lot of horsepower on-stage and that we were at the SEOmoz Training Raceway.

Mozinar fans experienced exhilaration and gleaned insights as we watched performance race car drivers present their seminar presentations. The following race highlights are condensed from 32 pages of notes. I strongly suggest you buy the Pro Seminar DVD when it’s produced so you can see under the hood for yourself.

From Clicks to Conversions with Local, Social, Analytics and SEO in Between

1st up: Rand Fishkin had pole position and drove a car with a most unusual name, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad SERP.”

The results we are seeing in blended search results are even more unusual, starting with changes of the past 2 weeks. For those who attend SEO races regularly and are watching Google, this may be old news. For others, brace yourself. A branded search can have more than 2 results. Rand explained:

• You have to be seen as a brand.
• You have to have lots of links pointing to those pages with the brand name.
• You need to have a high volume set of people searching for those terms, so off-site advertising and media buys can influence the SERPs.

Changes to Image SEO was next, and guess what? Google has a new image search interface.

• Image results don’t always match image SERP’s order, i.e. images for the artist “manet.”
• Understand, and be prepared. You will not always get the same position in the blended results, leading to frustration.
• Image SEO value is reduced by the new overlay.

The image below results from clicking on one of the images for the artist “manet” and clicking on an image

Tip: Write some JavaScript that breaks the overlay to avoid having the image overlay. Not only does it produce the longest, ugliest URL, but “it’s just an invite to right click and steal this image.”

Rand covered 10 Tips for Image Rankings. (Since we are in race synopsis mode, we’ll speed through this.) One quick takeaway was the minimum image size:

Image Pixel Size – If you go smaller than 400×300 pixels your chances to show in image search are dramatically decreased.

So you don’t have to remember any formulas, basic on-page SEO factors for image SEO include page title and surrounding text.

Video SERPs

It’s or easier to get into video SERPs than to get into the regular SERPS. There is lower competition than ordinary results (most of the time), so take the opportunity. Follow this inclusion process to enter your video race for top ranking:

Step #1: Embed Video Content on Your Pages
Step #2: Create Thumbnail Images for Videos
Step #3: Build a Video XML Sitemap & Submit
Step #4: PROFIT $$$

See Google Webmaster Tools for Video to learn more.

Rand’s foot stayed pedal-to-the-metal as he showed how to produce Rich Snippets in the SERPs. Why is this important? This is where you get most of your clicks. His closing remarks were retweeted with fervor:

“If you can stay on top of this, you will have a big win. It demands full-time SEO.”

2nd up: David Mihm was full-speed as he raced through “Ranking in Competitive Local Results.” He explained:

Straight from Google’s mouth:
Local intent is 20% of total search volume (April 2010)

And who would imagine that local results could equal 100% of page 1? Try a search for “dentist chicago.” (If it’s not 100%, it’s close.)

Google organic results are not, however, the dominate factor for local search. Neither are results from Yahoo! or Bing. Local search is now:

• Craigslist
• Twitter
• FaceBook
• Citysearch
• Google Products
• Mobile devices
• Garmin GPS
• Wikipedia
• Virtual Augmented Reality

Understand that local requires a different mindset from traditional SEO, because the ecosystems vary:

• Traditional SEO is about optimizing websites.
• Local SEO is about optimizing locations.

Takeaway:

“It is essential to have a holistic local search marketing strategy.”

“Even if all your boss cares about is that friggin’ 7-pack!”

Resources to claim your listings:

• Google Places
• Bing Local Listing Center
• Yahoo! Local Business Center

“The Big Three” major data providers:

• infoUSA
• Localeze
• Acxiom

Citations – David recommended a new citation finder tool by Darren Shaw & Garrett French: Whitespark.ca Citation Finder

Find local SEO resources on GetListed.org.

3rd up to race: Dan Zarrella racing in the “Science of Twitter” car. Dan warned us he talked fast. Pro Seminar attendees listened attentively, but given the subject was Twitter … many tweeted insights into how one can get clicks and retweets.

]]> http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/from-clicks-to-conversions-at-the-seomoz-training-raceway/feed/ 0 http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/linkscapes-august-update-better-domain-authority-numbers-new-partners-and-more/ http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/linkscapes-august-update-better-domain-authority-numbers-new-partners-and-more/#comments Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:35:57 +0000 voycgromgrspa http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/linkscapes-august-update-better-domain-authority-numbers-new-partners-and-more/

Posted by randfish

Today I’m happy to announce that we’ve just updated Linkscape’s web index (which also powers Open Site Explorer and the metrics via the mozBar) with fresh link data. You should see some bright shiny links we’ve found from late July to early August in this index (e.g. our own Beginner’s Guide now has lots of interesting link information). We also have some cool updates to the API, new partnerships and more, all covered below.

50% Improvement to Domain Authority

You may recall when we produced our correlation research this Spring, we showed that while Page Authority was substantively better than any other metric for an individual page’s importance, Domain Authority was much rougher (and only slightly better than homepage toolbar PageRank, i.e. pretty bad). We’ve been hard at work improving our models, adding data sources and writing code to help and this index is our first to feature an improved Domain Authority.

Thus, you’ll generally find that sites that perform better in Google’s rankings will have higher DA, while those that don’t do tremendously well are much lower. We also noted that a lot of the “bunching”

Posted by Danny Dover

]]> http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/e-commerce-seo-making-product-pages-into-great-content-whiteboard-friday/feed/ 0 http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/5-actionable-takeaways-from-ses-san-francisco-2010/ http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/5-actionable-takeaways-from-ses-san-francisco-2010/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:21:32 +0000 GarebamyOrabe http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/5-actionable-takeaways-from-ses-san-francisco-2010/

Posted by jennita

Last week I covered SES San Francisco for SEOmoz. Every time I attend a conference, I try to go to sessions that will have information I can bring back to the community. Sometimes I look for sessions that aim to answer questions we see a lot in Q & A or that I notice popping up in comments on the blog. Either way, my focus is usually to find information that will be helpful to the community.

Now and then I get a little greedy though, and attend sessions that will benefit me in my job. Luckily I hit the sweet spot at SES and found a little of both. Rather than straight up regurgitate what speakers presented, I thought I’d take their insights and show some examples specific to SEOmoz.

1. Who are the specific people sending you traffic?

At SES I was reminded about my problem with A.F. (analytics forgetfulness) and a few things that I personally should be doing to not only be better at my job, but to help the company and community. Marty Weintraub from aimClear was the one that initially got me thinking in the “Deep Dive Into Analytics” panel on the first day.

How often do we look at traffic sources and focus on which sites are sending traffic… ok always. But what about looking at the actual people from those sites that are sending traffic. Let’s take Twitter for example. When most people are tweeting they’re usually either in an app or they’re on the web looking from their own page, which shows up as “/” for most referrers.

But sometimes, people are viewing a specific person’s twitter page and THEN click your link. In those instances, Google Analytics will show the actual twitter user page as the referrer. This is a quick and easy way to find out WHO is sending you traffic. This person is also probably someone who is an influencer in your community. Finding who the top referrers are is the first step, next you’ll want to use Klout (or another service) to see what their actual reach is. This doesn’t only work for Twitter though, check out the example below that I found looking at delicious referrers.

This is a list of referrers from delicious.com. Let’s see what Chris Brogan, an influencer in the Social Media space bookmarked.

]]> http://www.ecommerceshare.com/articles/5-actionable-takeaways-from-ses-san-francisco-2010/feed/ 0