If you want to understand how Google search works, go through this diagram in detail.
This is the introductory post on Aaron’s SEOBook.com blog: How Does Google Work

And the diagram (follow link to diagram at bottom of diagram if you want to link to it yourself).

Infographic by PPC Blog

How Google Search works

Car Polish Keywords

Page titles that load (or stuff) keywords into the title don’t work as well as page titles that use relevant keywords written in a natural way – for readers. You might not notice this effect where there is little or no competition for search results, but it gets a lot more important when you are dealing with competitive keywords.

Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines advise:

Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.

Google Webmaster Guidelines

This applies in the title as well as in the page body copy.

A good principle to follow is to write natural language titles that include your keywords within the first 60-70 characters. Avoid any temptation to load the title with lots and lots of keywords.

To get more value from your page titles, use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to research relevant phrases. When you are using this, localise the tool to your country so you can see Local search history, and also change Match Type to Exact rather than Broad if you want to understand exactly what keywords people are searching for.

Choose niche keywords in preference to ‘mega’ keywords – you’ll have more chance of ranking on them initially, and they will help you rank on higher value keywords later.

This excellent video tutorial from Aaron Wall provides detailed instructions on page titles:
Google SEO Friendly Page Titles

This is an article – also from Aaron Wall – that describes the ‘natural language’ issue in more detail:
Search Engine Friendly Copywriting – What Does ‘Write Naturally’ Mean for SEO?

This article from Michael Gray provides excellent detailed guidance on how to prepare page titles, headings and permalinks. Optimizing Wordpress Page Titles, Post Titles and Page Slugs

Writing Search Engine Friendly Titles for your Posts and Web Pages

A recent chart post from eMarketer looks at the loyalty of visitors from social media sites: Loyal visitors but small share from social sites. But in the same post, it quotes some information sourced from Chikita about the overall volume of traffic.

Most Referrals are from Search (Source: eMarketer)

The company looked at the top sites sending traffic to the publishers in its network and found that Google alone accounted for 76.13% of referrals.

Taken together, search engines made almost 98% of all referrals, while social networking sites made up just 0.55%.

Running an active marketing campaign using Twitter is time intensive. Think of all that time spent reading tweets, tweeting and participating in conversations.

Can it lead to conversions? I’m sure it can. But marketing involves focussing your scarce resources (mainly time) on the actions that deliver the greatest outcomes. And what this chart shows is that when it comes to traffic, Google is the 800lb gorilla.

So for a small business with limited resources it is going to be hard to get the same results from a Twitter campaign that can be achieved from a search marketing campaign.

Twitter vs Google for business websites

It does go Bing

I get to see analytics for quite a few different websites. I’ve noticed that for a lot of sites, Bing seemed to have either caught up to Yahoo or overtaken it. A check of about 70 sites revealed Bing equalled or exceeded Yahoo in terms of traffic sent 48% of the time (according to Google Analytics).

When I had a look at Bing’s search results, they were fast and correlated closely to stable rankings I knew from Google.

By co-incidence, Google just started running a regional one box (map with 3 pack of related sites) on a moderately competitive search term that I monitor. Google has got it utterly wrong, and is displaying a map from a totally different place. On exactly the same search term, Bing is displaying accurate, relevant results.

This is a micoscopic sample, of course. But from my perspective, Bing is off to a much better start than anticipated.

Bing off to a good start

Recently I came across the phrase Google Friendly websites in Does Your Site Meet These 4 Online Publishing Criteria.

It shouldn’t be this way, but for a smaller business ’search engines’ now means Google. With limited time to focus on search, getting it right for Google is the #1 priority.

Google’s own keyword research tool shows search engine friendly is for now the more popular term. But I can’t see it staying this way.

Stand by for Google friendly websites.

A Search Engine Friendly website – or is that Google Friendly?

But Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com is making a call that Google’s Ranking Variables are going to change – big time.

Read his post. There are big implications for business online. Try this:

The future of SEO, therefore, will be increasingly about engaging people. The search engines will be measuring the signals users send. In the past, it’s all been about the signals webmasters send i.e. links and marked up content … [but] you’ll also need to think about the users – and the signals they send – in order to future proof your site.

It is hard not to feel frustrated that the rules can change on such a fundamental level.

A lot of business owners are just starting to get their head around relevant content and good links. Those will still matter. But as Aaron points out, the signals users send will matter even more.

Oh well, nothing to do but roll up the sleeves and help find the tools and services that help business do what they need. A time of major change represents both challenge and opportunity.

Everything about SEO is changing

Jane: What aspects of a website are most important for a business owner interested in marketing online?

Wendy: Definitely the overall professional image of the website design, but more importantly, the keyword search. If you don’t have this – you don’t have a website. It’s a bit embarrassing really, as we’ve had a website for 5 years, but it was really mostly being found by people that were looking for us specifically by name. The new website is helping so very much to gain business from people who’ve never heard of us. That’s very powerful!

(my emphasis). Thanks Wendy for expressing this so clearly.

By ‘the keyword search’, Wendy is referring to the fact that her site has a keyword plan and is search engine friendly. So popular keywords are now visible to the search engines, and the search engines now send visitors to her site she wasn’t getting before. 

Most of the time I talk to business owners about keywords, they are pretty sure they understand them. They know they want to be #1 on Google. But the keywords they are interested in are almost always based on common sense and intuition.

Once they get the keywords concept, there is an ‘aha’ moment. Because you don’t need to guess as much.

As Wendy puts it, keywords help you get found by people who have never heard of you before. And that is pretty cool.

If You Don’t Understand Keywords You Don’t Have a Website

… as search strategy defines the opportunity pursued by the web publication under consideration.

The web represents a massive increase in the number of people most businesses can reach. And in general business is only scratching the surface of how they can find new customers and convert them online.

Search engines are a major gateway to those people. So figuring out how your business can participate in search is a strategy. Not a tactic. Day to day SEO is tactical, but don’t think that is all it is.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of those important edges where technology meets marketing. A pure technology view isn’t enough, just as a pure marketing view isn’t enough. SEO requires an understanding of both.

If you are a technologist or marketer and don’t use SEO strategically yet, time to start.

Even more so for business owners.

But if you are starting out, learn about keywords first. Then SEO. It will all make sense.

Search Engine Optimization is a Strategy

Aaron has written a very detailed article about the comparative value of a #1 ranking on Google’s search engine results pages. What is surprising is just how much of a difference #1 is.

How Much is a Top Google Ranking Worth To Your Business

If you want to learn about SEO in detail, then joining Aaron’s SEO community is a good investment. Great online book and tutorials as well as access to an extremely helpful SEO forum.

Getting to #1 in Google’s Search Results

After looking at the objectives for his business online, and reviewing the personas he wants to talk to, we had a really productive discussion about keywords. We all participated in the keyword discussion. And ideas formed in my head about themes.

I have never tried to really explain themes to clients. At one level, it can all sound very technical / very geeky (and on one level, they are). But today was a bit different. I got it into my head I wanted to try and explain themes. Without getting a glazed over a look, or having people think I am geeking out all of a sudden. Because keywords and themes really matter.

To explore this subject, let’s take an example that is very easy to relate to. Let’s imagine for a moment we are going to open a funky cafe.

Naturally we want our funky cafe to have the looks. All of a sudden we are thinking street appeal, ambience, and seeing way cool folk sipping latte. But hang on, we gotta get serious here, what about the three rules that will determine the success of our cafe – Location, location and location! We all know these three rules matter.

This picture here shows a place that lacks street appeal – we could quickly fix that with a refit. But it doesn’t have location – and no amount of money is fixing that!

Ok, so what if the same three rules are important for websites? Location, location and location.

The location of a website isn’t obvious. External appearances? Sure, they are obvious, and anyone with a pulse is qualified to comment on what they consider poor design. With websites, if externals are a problem (and they usually aren’t), a makeover can usually fix them very quickly.

But how do you figure out the location, location, location of a website? And if you happen to be in a bad location, can it be fixed with a simple makeover?

In short, the answer to the location question is that to understand it, you need to understand two concepts:

• Keywords: Lots of people search for stuff, and search depends on keywords. Good keywords are good business because they bring search visitors.
• Themes. Lots of people find stuff on the web by surfing (reading and clicking on to other web pages). What people read is not random, there is a theme to it all. Tapping into good themes is good business because it brings referral visitors.

Keywords and themes are the major factors that will determine the quality and quantity of search and referral visitors to your website. The physical location of a cafe determines the potential for visitors to come through its doors. Bad coffee can turn them away in a good location. But good coffee can’t bring people to a bad location.

Likewise, keywords and themes control the potential number of visitors to a website.

One day it will be obvious where websites are located. And keywords and themes will be the lenses we use to view it. But it isn’t that obvious these days. Understanding how to use Themes in websites is hard (or has been until now!). Understanding keywords isn’t hard, it’s just that most people *think* they get it, when they don’t. It isn’t hard to really get it, but as the saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know.

So after this morning’s inspirational session on wine and olive oil, I wrote an article called SEO Web Development. While the title is a thinly veiled attempt to tap into a moderately popular keyword (and thinly veiled as it is, it will bring traffic), the core of the article is a diagram explaining Themes and Keywords and how to use these concepts to optimize a business website.

I realise I’m going out on a limb here. Themes and Keywords = Location, Location, Location for websites. And I’m laying out on the table what I believe is a simple approach to use the concepts to structure (or restructure) a website. Or to anchor it in a good location, if you like. Theming is an SEO concept that I’ve never really seen a good explanation of. After doing a lot of work in the area, I have a view on what Themes are (and if this isn’t it, I’ll need to rename my concept, because it is useful).

The article was written primarily to guide my own team and the freelancers who help us prepare online marketing websites for clients. Like many aspects of online marketing however, business owners can benefit from understanding what is involved here. Even if you won’t be developing websites yourself, understanding Themes and Keywords will help you make good business decisions about your online business.

Making good decisions about Keywords and Themes means balancing out a lot of competing factors. Some are highly technical and need SEO knowledge. Some aren’t, but require require business judgement (so a business owner’s input is vital).

What do you think about it all?

Are keywords and themes that important?

If you are not into SEO, does SEO Web Development explain the importance of keywords and themes to the point you would know what sort of questions to ask when planning your website?

If you are into SEO, do you agree with the approach I’ve taken in SEO Web Development? Would a website structured on these principles tend to perform better or worse than most other websites?

They laughed when I mentioned keywords and themes, but when I showed them this diagram …