Writing Title Tags for Humans, Google, & Bing

Search Engine Land recently published a comprehensive overview of appropriate uses of the title tag in light of what the author considers less-than-stellar advice from John Gruber, author of the technology blog, ‘Daring Fireball.’ Danny Sullivan runs through specific examples that Gruber gives and discusses the effects and implications of title tag implementation, in all of its various presentations.

Insight: Finding information related to best practices for on-page ranking factors can be difficult. This is because a lot of the information being circulated online was written years ago, when search engine algorithms varied significantly from what they are now. For those beginning a career in search engine marketing, this lengthy article is a great source of information that is still relevant to Google & Bing’s most recent algorithmic changes. Additionally, for those who have experience performing SEO, this article stands as a great refresher for one of the simplest, yet most important, on-page SEO ranking elements.

Best of Design 2010

As 2010 comes to a close, it’s time to wrap up the year’s best, most impressive design work and Web development projects. Featured on Web Designer Wall’s Best of the Web blog post is an astounding collection of HTML / CSS3 demos and innovative product websites as well as fun and interactive learning tools like “20 Things I Learned About Web Browsers,” previously featured in December 20th’s issue of Bug Bytes

Insight: Web Designer Wall’s list is a zeitgeist of exciting Web development ideas that will surely influence the way we view the Web in the New Year. The kinds of interactive displays featured on the list will become more commonplace as time goes on and the Web has time to mature. For now, these examples of good design in 2010 are a snapshot of the future of Web development, and an inspiration for where the industry will go next.

Top Web Design Trends for 2011

By looking at last year’s “Best Of,” we can begin making assumptions as to what will be the biggest trends for the coming year. Desktop publishing software developer, Marqui, presents what it believes to be the trends carrying over to 2011. Trends include HTML5 and CSS3 implementation, more variety in typography, magazine-style “editorial” layouts, minimalism, wider site layouts, and mobile compatibility.

Insight: Designers in the New Year have a wealth of tools at their disposal for creating attractive and engaging websites. Staying ahead of the Web development curve ensures that a site’s shelf life is long, preventing talk of a redesign in the near future. Additionally, implementing these trends properly will help present content in a more professional manner that won’t look cheesy within the year. Mudbug Media has already implemented many of these trends on our own website, and has plans of following suit with many more.

Rails 3 Cheat Sheet & Rails for Zombies

In an effort to make Rails development simpler and more inviting, Envy Labs has produced a set of cheat sheets covering the core Rails 3 APIs, and more. Additionally, Envy Labs recently published Rails for Zombies, an interactive Rails training course featuring zombies (!) to help direct programmers unfamiliar with Rails development.

Insight: Ruby on Rails is a framework for developing sites that feature dynamic content, with Twitter being the most common (and largest) example of sites using the framework. These cheat sheets, as well as the interactive zombie training exercises, should act as great educational materials for those looking for resources while working with the dynamic framework.

Yelp Targets Foursquare, Facebook With Check-In Offers

Yelp continues to update their platform by adding new, competing features —“check-in offers.” This is similar to what Foursquare and Facebook offer, in which users check in to local business and broadcast to their network of friends. This “check-in” feature essentially gets consumers to advertise the businesses they patronize and rewards them accordingly. Foursquare has had success establishing check-in deals for “mayors,” securing partnerships with Starbucks, Pizza Hut, and many other businesses. Facebook, since introducing its “Places” platform, has successfully brought local social networking to the mainstream, and is in the process of working out deals, as well.

Insight: Yelp is jumping into a market that already has two huge players; however, they also have a solid platform with a loyal fanbase, and a mobile marketshare that could rival Foursquare’s. While mobile has been ‘the next big thing’ in the Internet marketing arena for well over a year, the competition in local social networking shows that more and more businesses are taking it seriously.

Not Optimizing For Bing-Yahoo Means Loss Of Traffic

SEO is a constantly evolving process that works to rank websites higher in search engines. Because Google has had a stronghold on the search marketshare for a decade, most SEOs have concentrated efforts on Google, neglecting Bing and Yahoo!, the other two significant players in the game. Now that the Bing / Yahoo! merger has been completed and Yahoo! web properties use the Bing algorithm, it’s finally time to take Microsoft’s search engine seriously. According to Chitika ad network, Google has 72% of search engine traffic share, and Bing / Yahoo! collectively hold 24%.

Insight: Good search engine optimization should take into consideration the evolution of search engines, and because Google had held strong dominance for so long, it was easy to focus on Google optimization without losing significant search visits. Now that nearly a quarter of the search market uses Bing’s algorithm, neglecting the search engine will mean lost search traffic.

Beginner’s Guide To Web Data Analysis: Ten Steps To Love & Success

When “benchmarking” a website’s traffic data and other web metrics, there are a few things to consider. Most people go directly to the analytics report and dig up the clicks, visits, conversions, and other key performance indicators. This plan of attack leaves the researcher blind to the website’s core functions, and without an idea of the true user experience. In this blog post by Google evangelist Avinash Kaushik, the author asserts that the first step should always be getting a general feeling of the website by acting as a new visitor, familiarizing yourself with it like any other potential customer would. After getting an understanding the website’s purpose and specific goals for conversion, check the website’s analytics suite to determine how successful the website really is.

Insight: When analyzing a website, it is easy to neglect important pages for a number of reasons. If the analytics script is incorrectly installed on a conversion page, the page won’t appear in the analytics reports at all. Remember to visit the website, view the statistics, and then use the insights gathered from the charts and graphs to paint a picture of how well the website performs. This will create a better-informed, qualitative report for whomever reads it, as opposed to mind-numbing number crunching.

Remarketing: Recycle Your Web Traffic

“Remarketing” is one of the hottest advertising topics of 2010. As of this past week, remarketing is available to any small business that would like to hop on the trend and bring extremely segmented and targeted traffic back to the site. By “tagging” visitors that come to your site with a unique tracking pixel, anyone who visits a page on your site will be served your ads when browsing a large network of websites. Because these visitors have already been to your website and are showing repeated interest, they become more likely to convert.

Insight: In some cases, such as travel tickets, remarketing can increase the likelihood of conversion by 2600% (26x). While many small businesses have taken on pay-per-click advertising with great success, remarketing acts as a new channel for promoting products and services online. Additionally, remarketing may provide for continued growth in the online advertising sector during the coming business year.

Google Wave to become Apache project

Google Wave, touted as what email would look like if it weren’t developed in the ‘60s, was considered a failed product by most because of the poor rate of adoption. Because of community interest in continuing this platform, a proposal was submitted to Google to migrate portions of the code base to the Apache software foundation.

Insight: Google Wave is an impressive feat in computer science, and its community of loyal users saw the usefulness the web application had, especially in project management. Mudbug Media’s team of application developers use Google Wave as a productivity tool, and is excited to see the project live on in “Wave-in-a-Box” form.

Mobile market share of Google’s Android platform has grown tremendously over the first three quarters of 2010, putting the search giant in a favorable position in the mobile OS game. Android is an open-source project, originally purchased by Google in 2005, and while Google claims it is a healthier source of revenue than expected at the year’s start, Google isn’t making money off the operating system itself; it’s making money off the fact that Android users are twice as likely to perform mobile searches as other mobile users. With every mobile search, Google has the opportunity to gain even more market share, as well as revenue through PPC ad placement, just as it has been for years with desktop search.

Because of Android’s explosive growth over the past year, as well as the fact that Google owns 76% of the mobile search market share, Google has positioned itself as an advocate of mobile web design and even mobile SEO. Recently, Google released an update to their 2008 SEO Starter Guide, refreshing a simple yet insightful document that gives an introduction to key terms and concepts for those new to the discipline. In the revamped Starter Guide, Google introduced a concept that was heretofore untouched by the search engine: mobile SEO.

Google touching on, and advocating, mobile optimization means that the practice has hit the tipping point. Internet marketers and business owners need to get serious about their mobile presence, because mobile use doesn’t show signs of slowing.

Developing your Mobile Web Presence: Step by Step

1. Get Indexed

In some ways, SEO is like a race – whoever gets to the finish line first wins. Google has always favored websites with historical significance (IMDb, CNN), so it should be no surprise that this ranking factor is thought to reside in Google’s mobile algorithm. Be sure to have your mobile site indexed by Googlebot-mobile, and not the traditional Googlebot. This avoids duplicate content issues that might arise when the desktop crawler indexes your site. Modifying crawl preferences can be administered in the robots.txt file.

2. Submit a mobile Sitemap via Bing’s and Google’s Webmaster Tools

Adding a mobile XML Sitemap is easy, and if you’ve created a Sitemap for your desktop website you should be familiar with the XML Sitemap protocol. Make sure to list all the pages you want included in Google’s mobile index, and be sure to follow the mobile Sitemap protocol; otherwise, your mobile URLs may not be properly crawled.

3. Optimize your Content for Mobile Habits

When developing content or optimizing your already-existent content, be sure to pay attention to mobile search trends and behavior. According to a study done by a team of Googlers (consisting of a Ph.D student and a senior staff researcher), the average mobile query is 2.56 words. Other research on mobile search behavior finds that mobile searches are geared toward two key concepts: location and brands. While desktop searches include geographical modifiers in one out of five instances, on average, mobile searches are locally oriented one-third of the time. Be sure to use Google Analytics’ “Mobile Traffic” advanced segment to determine how your visitors enter the website and behave differently when compared to desktop visitors.

Cashing in on the Mobile Gold Rush

Much like the Internet of yesteryear, mobile web is still a bit like the Wild West: open, relatively desolate, and extremely valuable if you can be the first to strike gold. Not every e-commerce store has a mobile app, but those that did profited greatly last Holiday season. Mobile Web will become an integral part of every company’s Web presence, regardless of the industry. Organizing your SEO efforts appropriately can help you effectively target your audience both on the desktop as well as on the go.

Bing plans to connect your friends’ product and page ‘Likes’ within organic search results by implementing Facebook’s Open Graph protocol directly into SERPs. This new feature is not expected to affect search rankings, so it won’t have any effect on SEO implementation as we know it. However, juxtaposing your friend’s preferences and opinions next to previously unbiased results could most certainly change user behavior within the organic search results.

To enforce user privacy, Bing will ask individual users before activating the feature, giving them the opportunity to “disable” or to learn more about it. This is quite the opposite of Gmail users who awoke one day with a new social network to monitor: Google Buzz. Additionally, users will only see information from their Facebook friends versus any publicly available and relevant Facebook data.

Google vs. New Bing

Google’s groundbreaking innovation was an algorithm that displayed the most relevant information to a search, using a formula that takes into consideration websites’ content, linking power, as well as structure. Bing’s newest advancement is to display not only the most relevant information, but also the most trusted information, based on what your friends’ opinions.

For example, if you are searching for “auto insurance” in Google, your will get the most relevant results for websites containing information about ‘auto insurance’. However, if your friend John ‘Likes’ Geico or State Farm, and they have shared that information on Facebook, it will appear on Bing’s results as well.

Marketing Takeaway

Companies that incorporate social media, by creating a Facebook business page and adding a ‘Like’ button to their website, are more likely to be shared on the Internet by a Facebook user—creating more opportunities to appear in Bing’s search results.

Bing’s Facebook partnership will require companies to focus more on improved customer experience for the sake of word of mouth. If someone ‘Likes’ your company and they share it on Facebook, Bing will share it with the world.

After you enjoy these mind-blowing links, Tweet, write on our wall or leave a comment below to let us know what you think.

Marketing

Samsung reveals tablet launch details.

iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch to get wireless printing with iOS 4.2.

Facebook passed Google in “time spent,” so what does that mean?

How to generate links through media relations.

What moms can teach us about the Internet.

Business writing for the Web: 27 ways to write more better-like.

The anatomy and evolution of Google Search results listings.

Matt Cutts acknowledges SEO 2.0 tactic of linking out as a ranking factor.

Design

A design is only as deep as it is usable.

What businesses can learn from designers.

Don’t make me wait. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

Everyone who tried to convince me to use Vim was wrong.

Charts of the Yay!

Bing beats Yahoo for number two spot in search rankings.

Google’s Search share flatlines.

The ugly outlook for Nokia’s new CEO.

Oh, and remember to check out our delicious tags to see what else we’re looking at.

We want to know what you think of our links.  Tweet, write on our wall or leave a comment below.

Design

Give users some credit.  They are not (all) idiots.

250 beautiful typography t-shirts.

Applying LEED principals to graphic design.

Marketing

Why tumblr trumps micro blogging.

Infographic: The Geosocial Universe

SEO

23 awesome SEO blogs everyone should read.

New marketing data: Top SEO objectives.

How long until Facebook passes Google in traffic.

It’s official: Yahoo’s results now come from Bing.

Qualitative web analytics: Heuristic evaluations rock!

Programming

Spritely: Flash-like animation with jQuery.

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world.

12 standard screen patterns.

And don’t forget to check out our delicious tags to see what else we’re looking at.

We want to know what you think.  Tweet, write on our wall or leave a comment below.

Facebook

Facebook Open Graph: Coming to a Mobile Device Near You.

How to Protect Your Brand and Strengthen Your Facebook Presence with Facebook Community Pages.

Email Marketing

Using Email Marketing to Boost Social Presence.

Truncation traps: 3 more subject line lessons.

Why Email Metrics Are in Decline.

Infographics!

12 kickass SEO Infographics.

But really, what infographic isn’t kickass?

iPad

Thoughts on Designing for the iPad.

You can put the brand onto the iPad, But You Can’t Put The IPad Into The Brand.

In other news: your horse is thirsty.

Google News

Bing generates More Clicks Than Google.

Google Places API Could Do For Check-ins What Google Maps Did For Maps.

Make them relevant?

A Video

Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing.

Chart of the Day

Digg users Have More Diverse Taste than Reddit readers.

Take that Reddit!

Can’t wait for the next link round up? Check back here everyday to see what we are interested in.

We want to know what you think.  Tweet, write on our wall or leave a comment below.

By the Numbers

3 tips for Building an Effective Landing Page.

4 ways to Keep Your Hospital’s Website Clean.

3 Twitter tools to take away from the BlueGlass LA Twitter conference.

10 Tips for Designing Mobile Websites.

Chart

More and more businesses are Warming up to the Mac.

Design

Abduzeedo has a great article about a Psychological Study of Web Designs.

Penguin Classics is celebrating its 75^th anniversary in publishing by letting you design your own classic book cover in the Speaking to the Past contest.

Six Revisions: useful information for web developers and designers.

Marketing and SEO

How Infographics Create Organic Links for websites.

Keyword Targeting: The Essential Guide for Website Owners.

The Paradox of Promises in the age of word of mouth.

Why Consumers Connect with Marketers via email and social media.

Bing Solidifies Growth as Yahoo loses share in Q2.

The next big thing for marketers: Social Magazines.

How the fashion magazine industry Plans to Profit from Digital This Fall.

Updated Bing Webmaster Tools.

Examining the differences between Email, Facebook and Twitter audiences.

Tips to help you Assess Your Email Opt-In Process.

Can’t wait for the next link round up?  Check back here everyday to see what we are interested in.

Here’s a look at some of the sites Chris and Antonio turn to regularly for tips, analysis of current events and inspiration.

Search Engine News

Search Engine Land – This site has tons of valuable material covering Google, Bing & search industry news, as well as the yearlong PPC Academy series.

Search Marketing Now – This site offers webcasts, whitepapers and resources for online and search engine marketers.

Google Resources

Google Webmaster Central Blog – Google’s official blog for news on crawling and indexing websites for the Google index.

Inside Adwords – Google’s official blog for news, information and tips on AdWords.

Official Google Analytics Blog – The best source for information on updates to GA as well as tips.

Google Analytics Application Gallery – The Official Google Application Gallery featuring several great web applications built using the Google Analytics’ API.

SEM Implementation

Open Graph – Facebook recently created the Open Graph protocol to bring the rest of the Web to Facebook in an effort to rival Google’s web footprint. Additional metadata allows a site to rank within Facebook, and it also increases content share-ability by having site visitors publish site content, such as blog posts and news stories, to their friends via their News Feed.

Asynchronous Tracking – Google recently updated their Analytics Tracking Code and this blog gives step-by-step instructions on how to migrate to the new code.  The main benefit of asynchronous tracking is faster load time, which has recently become a factor of Google’s search algorithm.

LunaMetrics – LunaMetrics has accumulated a wealth of information and resources over many years of working with Google Analytics and Website optimization, and they like to share the most useful tips on this site.

Local SEO Resources

Local Search Rankings – Regionalized SEO comprises a large part of our SEO focus, so this particular blogpost offers tips for optimizing Google Places and Google Local Business Listing.

Local Search Optimization – This one is specifically for Google Maps and Google Earth.  It contains information regarding the utilization of KML within XML Sitemaps, an advanced SEO technique beyond standard issue, local SEO.

Online Marketing Resources

eMarketer –This is a go-to site for online marketing tips, trends and statistics. eMarketer typically covers topics such as social media strategy, demographic and online trending as well as industry news and opinions. eMarketer is also a great source for charts and graphs on the above topics.

Marketing Sherpa – Similar to eMarketer, Marketing Sherpa is a how-to guide on topics, such as ecommerce, email marketing and search marketing. It is also a great source for charts and graphs on Web marketing trends.

Let us know if you find these links useful by commenting below.  We always enjoy feedback.

If your business advertises online, the clear choice for pay per click ad campaigns for much of the last decade has been Google, but competing search engine Bing could end up giving Google a run for its money.

But it’s Not Google

When you compare the success of online ad campaigns on Google and Bing, the well-established Google really holds some major advantages over Microsoft’s Bing, which will celebrate its first birthday on May 28.

First of all, Google has become a verb.  How often does someone tell you to “Just Google” something at work?  Has anyone ever told you to “Just Bing” it?”  Unless people start “Binging” things on a regular basis, I just don’t see Google’s domination of the search engine market ending anytime soon.

What this means for businesses is Bing may not be the most effective choice for PPC advertising. One of our major clients has an extensive PPC campaign going on right now, and the results tracked by Google’s AdWords service and Bing’s AdCenter speak for themselves.

Over a four-week period, the campaign wracked up 421,456 impressions and 5,743 clicks on Google.  During that same time period, Bing only generated 202,041 impressions and 503 clicks.  Despite the fact that half as many people saw the ads on Bing and less than a quarter of one percent of the Bing impressions led to clicks, the Bing ads cost on average three cents less than Google.

One Big Step for Bing?

But don’t rule out Bing just yet.  As Mudbug Media Marketing Specialist Tara Curtis cleverly pointed out in this recent blog, Google’s long running domination of the United States internet market ended earlier this month when Facebook became the most visited website in the country for the week ending March 13^th.

While Bing has fluctuated between the 16^th and 23^rd spots this week, Yahoo has held steady at the number three spot.  With the announced merger of Microsoft and Yahoo, the nascent search engine will get a huge boost, exposing Bing advertisements to millions more people nationwide.

More Bing for Your Buck

With Bing potentially riding that merger to the top of the charts, advertisers will find themselves in an interesting situation.  Like all things Google, AdWords is an extremely user-friendly system.

AdWords allows for constant and easy manipulation of all aspects of a paid search campaign, while Microsoft’s AdCenter is not nearly as user friendly.  Making changes to ongoing campaigns in AdCenter is a time consuming process, and since Bing is only one year old, few people have had the time to get acquainted with its ins and outs.

So if Microsoft’s alliance with Yahoo brings Bing into more direct contention with Google as one of the top search engines in the world, online marketing professionals like myself are going to find it necessary to know how to optimize paid search campaigns for Bing with the same expertise as they do Google campaigns.

What This Means to You

While it may be too early to abandon AdWords and focus all your energy on AdCenter, it would certainly be a wise move to be proficient with both systems.  Paid search campaigns are dynamic and can fluctuate as market values and economic landscapes change.

Online marketing is an evolving but necessary facet of today’s advertising landscape requiring constant attention and adjustments.  If you are doing everything on your own or if the marketing firm you contracted for the campaign isn’t on top of new developments or possible market shifts, you can end up with ads that no one sees.

Google is already a powerful search engine and Bing could become one soon.
Use your advertising dollars wisely.