Welcome to Natural Search Blog
Natural Search Blog provides articles on search engine optimization including keyword reasearch, on-page factors, link-building, social media optimization, local search optimization, image search optimization, and mobile SEO.
In addition to natural search optimization topics, we also cover internet marketing, ecommerce, web design, usability, and technology.
Recent Entries
Image Sharing Sites & Search Engine Optimization
I just wrote an article on Search Engine Land on how to use image optimizations for local search engine optimization. Even prior to Google’s introduction of Universal Search, a number of us have been suggesting that improving one’s placement in various search verticals beyond the primary web search could help one’s overall natural search marketing program. I’ve written previously about optimization of image content and optimizing through Flickr — and optimizing for local search, while SES Conference sessions have covered optimizing video content, Rohit Bhargarva has written about optimizing through social media, Matt McGee has written on optimizing for Google’s Map Search, and Neil Patel has written on optimizing for blog search.
If you’re interested in a great overview of the convergence of vertical search in the newly blended Universal Search, check out this article by my colleague, P.J. Fusco on “Personalized, Universal and Optimized“.
If you’re interested in more details on how to optimize for image search and how to optimize through image sharing sites such as Flickr, Fotki, and 23, be sure to catch the panel session I’ll be participating in at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose in August. I’ll be joined again by my colleagues, Shari Thurow, and Liana Evans along with perhaps a couple of engineers from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/23/2007
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Filed under: Image Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Image-Sharing-Sites, Images-&-Search, Search-Engine-Strategies-Conference
The Simpsons & Great Participatory-Viral Marketing
This past Saturday, I mosied over into central Dallas to check out the Kwik-E-Mart that was created to promote The Simpsons film, set to air nationwide later this week. The Kwik-E-Mart was created out of a 7-Eleven convenience store – surely the first ever instance of the subject of a satire being remade to more closely resemble the satire itself. The Dallas Kwik-E-Mart is one of the eleven created nationwide out of 7-Eleven stores, and it’s a simply fantastic piece of viral marketing, participatory marketing – and yes, linkbait.
Read on for more details…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/23/2007
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Filed under: Link Building, Marketing linkbait, Participatory-Marketing, The-Simpsons, The-Simpsons-Movie, Viral-Marketing
Google Quietly Decommissions Click-to-Call from Maps
Google quietly decommissioned their experimental click-to-call services from Google Maps. Previously, you could use the “call” links beside phone numbers in their search results:
It’d be nice if Google would officially mention when they remove such features from service, even if they were considered experimental. Quite a number of people reported using the feature, and some were even reliant upon it for making things like personal long-distance calls from within companies that didn’t allow employees to do so, or where long distance was actively blocked. Google didn’t announce the change on the Google LatLong Blog where you might expect, but instead stated it in a response to a user’s question in the Troubleshooting section of the Google Maps Help Group:
Of course, the service was introduced free, and no one can ever expect a free ride forever, and perhaps cell phones make click-to-call less attractive to users. Though, I would’ve expected they’d first see if they could get such a service to pay for itself through advertising before throwing it out altogether. For instance, each call could’ve been prepended by a brief audio ad or they could be displaying ads along side the call/maps interfaces while users were connecting through. Perhaps they just had trouble working out call quality issues.
For those users seeking a good voice-over-IP (“VOIP”) solution, I guess they can sign up for Skype.
Update: I see this has also been reported by Grant Robertson at downloadsquad.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/20/2007
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Filed under: Google, Maps Click-to-Call, Google-Maps, voip
Automatic Search Engine Optimization through GravityStream
I’ve had a lot of questions about my new work since I joined Netconcepts a little over three months ago as their Lead Strategist for their GravityStream product/service. My primary role is to bring SEO guidance to clients using GravityStream, and to provide thought leadership to the ongoing development of the product and business.
GravityStream is a technical solution that provides outsourced search optimization to large, dynamic websites. Automatic SEO, if you will. Here’s what it does…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/17/2007
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Filed under: Content Optimization, Dynamic Sites, HTML Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Site Structure, Tools Automatic-Search-Engine-Optimization, GravityStream, Netconcepts, Outsourced-Search-Engine-Optimization, Search Engine Optimization, SEO
Build It Wrong & They Won’t Come: Coca-Cola’s Store
I just wrote an article comparing Coke’s and Pepsi’s homepage redirection, concluding that Pepsi actually does a better job, though both of them did ultimately nonoptimal setup for the purposes of search optimization. Clunky homepage redirection isn’t the only search marketing sin that Coca-Cola has done — their online product shopping catalog is very badly designed for SEO as well, and I’ll outline a number of reasons why.
In this article and in the redirection article, I’m criticising Coca-Cola’s technical design quite a bit, but I’m not trying to embarrass them — like any good American boy, I love Coca-Cola (particularly Coke Classic and Cherry Coke). In fact, this could ultimately benefit them, if they take my free assessment and use it as a guide for improving their site. I’m doing this because Coca-Cola is the top most-recognized brand worldwide, and the sorts of errors they’re making in their natural search channel are all too common in ecommerce sites. I chose Coca-Cola’s e-store because they make such a great example of the sorts of things that online marketers need to focus upon. If such a juggernaut of a company, with huge advertising and marketing budgets makes these sorts of mistakes, you could be making them, too.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/16/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, brand names, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Worst Practices Coca-Cola, Coke, Etail-Optimization, Online-Catalog-Optimization, Online-Store-Optimization, SEO
Use LinkedIn for Career Building & Reputation Management
This past week, LeeAnn Prescott at Hitwise reported that usage of LinkedIn has risen by 323% in the past year:
For those of us working in the internet and information technology fields, this probably isn’t a big surprise. I started getting increasing amounts of LinkedIn invites a few years ago. If you’re not yet aware of the LinkedIn phenomenon, it’s a professional social networking site which allows you to post some biographical material, resume information, and then you can link up to your colleagues and other professional contacts who also have LinkedIn profiles.
If you haven’t joined LinkedIn yet, I’d encourage you to do so, because I think it’s beneficial to your career and good for your company. You should get everyone else in your company to integrate with it as well, because this could be beneficial to your company’s search engine optimization, too. Read on for more details.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/16/2007
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Filed under: Social Media Optimization hitwise, linkedin, Social Media Optimization
Domainers Can’t Get No Respect
Last week the second part of my “Domaining & Subdomaining in the Local Space” pubbed on Search Engine Land, and I’m particularly pleased with it, although my friends can deservedly kick me around a bit for writing articles too long. I did quite a lot of research for the two-part series, most particularly for this second segment which was focused entirely on Local Domaining.
One of the main things that I’m pleased about was my effort to be as objective as possible in writing the article — not only did I want to report on what is going on in local-oriented domaining, and who’s involved, but also to provide some concrete conclusions and recommendations which people could take away. I was upfront in disclosing my past negative bias about domaining, and in the course of writing the article I found that I had to revise my assumptions a few times over – in favor of Domaining, actually. Working off and on, I wrote the article over the course of about two months.
While doing the research, I became aware that the Domaining industry seems to have a bit of “younger sibling complex” — as an industry, they wish to be considered a respectable, bona fide line of business. Unfortunately, they have a few things which have been hampering that aim to some degree:
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/11/2007
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Filed under: Analytics, Domain Names, News, Tracking and Reporting Direct-Navigation, Direct-Search, Domain Names, Domainers, Domaining
Where’s the Google search result?
I had a client ask me the other day where his traffic was coming from, since he couldn’t find his listing in the top few pages of search results for a keyword that was showing up in his analytics reports. The analytics system had reported that he’d received a number of visits from users who’d searched for “Keyword X” in Google and had clicked through to his site. Problem is, when he went and searched for “Keyword X”, he didn’t see any of his pages listed in the first dozen or so pages of results in Google, and he figured it’d be unlikely that a number of users would click very many pages deep anyway.
So, how did this traffic happen?
This isn’t the only time I’ve seen something like this happen. Probably a number of people have had the experience of calling up a partner or colleague to talk about something they see in the Google search results, only to find that the person at the other end of the phone sees a very different thing when they commit the same search in Google. The listing could be shown 9 places down from the top of the page instead of 2 places down, or it isn’t showing up at all for them while it’s showing plain as day for you.
Unfortunately, this is going to become a more and more common experience for webmasters. Google’s diversity of search products and results sets are becoming more and more differentiated for different users, and as this happens, people searching for the very same keyword are going to be seeing completely different search results. Read on for more details.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/09/2007
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Filed under: Analytics, Google, Searching, Tracking and Reporting Google-Search-Results, Google-SERPs, Keyword-Search-Results, Personalization, Web-Analytics
Google Quality Scores for Natural Search Optimization
Google made big waves in the paid search marketing industry when they began introducing a Quality Score which impacted cost and rankings of AdWords advertisements. Similar quality scoring methods are likely in use as ranking criteria for Google’s natural search results as well, and Google’s Webmaster Tools may hint at some of the criteria. Here are some details of that quality scoring criteria and some ways for you to improve rankings with it.
Google provides a very rough “formula” for their AdWords Quality Score:
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/02/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Google, Search Engine Optimization, SEO Google, google-webmaster-tools, Quality-Scores, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Spamscore
To Have WWW or Not To Have WWW – That is the Question
Over time, I’ve become a fan of the No-WWW Initiative.
What is that, you might ask? It’s a simple proposal for sites to do away with using the WWW-dot-domainname format for URLs, and to instead go with the non-WWW version of domains instead. Managing your site’s main domain/subdomain name is one basic piece of search engine optimization, and this initiative can be a guide for how to decide which domain name will become the dominant one for a site. Read on for more info…
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 06/28/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Domain Names, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, URLs Canonicalization, Domain Names, SEO, subdomains
