I’ve had a lot of thanks for the tips in our email marketing jargon explained piece, so I thought I’d dive right in with some explanations of typical analytics jargon, because sometimes it can feel downright confusing!

For the purposes of today’s discussion, I’m mostly referring to Google Analytics, but in fact these terms are used wildly across a variety of analytics platforms.

If you’re not sure what analytics means, that’s ok – let’s start right there.  Web analytics are simply tools that you use to measure how much traffic your website recieves, where it comes from, and what those users are doing while they’re on your site. This data is important because it can help you know what percentage of your web users are actually buyers, and help you gauge the effectiveness of your various online marketing – you don’t want to pay for online advertising that doesn’t send paying customers, right?

Ok, now let’s dive right into the murk.  Here are some terms worth paying attention to, and what they mean.

Google’s graphics and dashboards might be easy on the eyes, but they’re still filled with jargon-y junk.

In alphabetical order…

A/B Testing (or Split Testing)

Ouch, alphabetical order means we start out on a hard one.  But A/B testing is simply testing two different scenarios to determine which one has better conversions.  Only two versions are tested in an A/B test; when multiple variables are changed, this is a multivariate test (see below).

How You’d Use This:  Let’s say you have just 1 page where people buy something.  You’re curious if people click a green BUY button more often than a orange BUY button.   Google Website Optimizer offers you the ability to do this, but it’s definitely for the intermediate/expert folks.

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who came to your website and left without visiting another page.  It’s a number many people obsess over without reason, because there are lots of times when someone is a bounce and it’s fine – say, they land on your blog post that sends them over to another site for a special deal.  Ok, they only visited one page, but it’s fine.

How You’d Use This: You want to get this number as low as possible.  Just based on how the web works, it will never be zero, so stop trying.  You’re doing great if you are below 50%.   Smart people look at the bounce rate of important, individual pages, not an entire website.

Conversion / Conversion Rate or Percentage Conversion

A conversion is where a website visitor completes a specific action. Conversions don’t always have to be a sale; a conversion could simply be a signup to a newsletter form, or to leave their phone number for a callback.  The percentage conversion or conversion rate is the percentage of all people who saw the offer and took it (so 100 people saw it, 5 phone calls, that’s 5% conversion.)

How You’d Use This: You need to know what your conversions are (a sale, signup, etc.)  Then you have to compare those to your overall visits to get percentages.  In Google, this can be tracked under the “goals” functionality.

Conversion Funnel

A conversion funnel is the defined path that visitors should take to reach a final conversion.  For example, if you have 3 screens of data to be entered before someone buys your product/service, each page or screen is a step in the funnel. The reason they call it a funnel is because as you move through each step, you’ll lose a few people, so you want as few steps as possible.

How You’d Use This: In Google, this is also under the “goals” functionality.  If you have multiple steps in the checkout process, I suggest you include all of them in setting up a goal.

Cookie

A cookie is a tiny text file placed on your visitor’s computer while browsing a website. Cookies contain information to track user behavior and returning visitors.

How You’d Use This:  You don’t – Google and other software products handle this for you.

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is a visitor to your website that didn’t come from anywhere specific – it wasn’t a referral, they had your web link and they clicked it, say from their browser favorites.  Of course, there are many ways a visitor can get to your site without a referral – for example, your business card is a great referral source to your website, but since we’re jumping from offline to online, that isn’t trackable.

How You’d Use This:  High levels of direct traffic are good because they could be repeat customers, but ask yourself where they might be coming from?

Entry Page

An entry page is a page that is the first page a visitor sees when reaching your site.  Entry pages aren’t always your homepage; let’s say you have an advertisement that sends someone to a particular sales page for a package.  The sales page is the entry page for all those ad clicks.

How You’d Use This: This is useful by seeing what you most popular content is.  When a new customer comes to that page, what kind of experience are they getting?

Exit Page

An exit page is the last page a visitor sees on your site.  They’re on the site and they click that “x” button to close the browser, or they click on a link that takes them to another site.

How You’d Use This:  People tend to overengineer this one – the fact is that people have to leave your website at some point, right?  So just pay attention to pages that rank high on the exit list.  The top page should be the “thanks for your order” page,  right? But are lots of people looking at a sales page and then leaving?  What could be wrong?

Goal

A goal is another word for a conversion.  Google calls it a goal because it isn’t always a sale.  See conversions, above.

Heat Map

A heat map is a tool that shows levels of activity on a web page in different colors,with reds and yellows showing the most activity and blues and violets the least. The result is a map which makes it easy to see what areas on the page are the most active.

How You’d Use This: This is great for the visual learners who want to know what’s going on with a particular page – heat maps are only good for pages with lots of traffic and “next step” options, like a homepage.  Google doesn’t technically offer a heat map tool, but you get something very close with their “In Page Analytics” option.  (I’ve often found this buggy, your mileage may vary.)

Hit

Every request to the server is recorded as a hit; this isn’t a very useful measurement as even search engine spiders are included, as are a simple request for an image.

How You’d Use This:  You don’t.  If you see anything about number of hits, ignore it.

Keyword Referral

A keyword referral is when someone typed in a phrase into a search engine, and clicked on a result that sent them to your website. Google sometimes blocks the information and you’ll see “(not provided)” here, and if you advertise with Google Adwords sometimes this will say “(not set)”.

How You’d Use This:  If you’re doing any search engine optimization work, I sure hope the words you are working on show up here. If not, you got problems.  (Also: there will always be weird things here. I can’t explain it.)

Multivariate Test

A multivariate test is different than an A/B test (see above) in that you’re changing multiple options on a page at one time, trying to determine the best conversion outcomes. An A/B test is changing one thing at a time, whereas multivariate test involves changing multiple things at a time and using sophisticated analytics to track.

How You’d Use This:  Google Website Optimizer offers you the ability to do this, but it isn’t the best tool.  I wouldn’t get into multivariate tests until you’ve mastered A/B testing.

Pages Per Visit

This figure tells you, on average, how many pages a single website visitor views on your site during a single session. For example, if I looked at your homepage, a blog post, and then two of your package pages, that would be 4 pages for my visit.

How You’d Use This:  The higher the number, the more “sticky” your website is.  Most sites are in between 1 and 4.  I wouldn’t worry too much about this one.

Pageview

A pageview is a  single person (“visitor”) viewing a single page on your website.  So if you had 100 visitors and each looked at 4 pages, that’s 400 pageviews.  This is the most common “traffic” measurement used currently.

How You’d Use This: Just like I mention below on visitors, this figure is a common way to measure traffic, though I always say it isn’t about how much traffic you have but what that traffic does.  For a business owner, this is only meaningful in giving you trend information (example: “wow, we get twice as much traffic during the holidays, with another peak in April. We should rotate our deals and ads before those periods.”)

Percentage (%) of New Visits

This is the percentage of the total visits that came from new visitors. A new visitor is simply someone without your site’s cookie present in their browser.  As you can imagine, then, this figure has room for error.

How You’d Use This:  Use this in conjunction with your marketing efforts; a high number of new visits is fine if you’ve just done a lot of SEO work, paid for some advertising, or other outreach efforts.  It isn’t the percentage that’s important here, it’s why.

Referrer

The referrer is the website URL that sent a user to a page on your website.  Facebook, Twitter, Website XYZ, Newspaper column ABC are all types of referrers.  Traffic that has no referrer information (they came from your business card, or their browser bookmarks) is called direct traffic.

How You’d Use This:  This is important to see where your website traffic is coming from, and if it matches up with where you are spending your time/money.  If you just paid big bucks for a Twitter ad and you aren’t getting any traffic, that’s a problem.  You want to watch this for unexpected traffic, like a media/blog mention you weren’t expecting.

Segments / Segmentation

Analytics can result in a glut of data, for sure.  Segmentation is breaking that data down into smaller piles so you can  spot trends.  For example, you could segment based on country or mobile phone users versus standard desktop users and maybe you’d see that 1) you have lots of mobile traffic and can justify site upgrades, or 2) nobody on a phone buys anything, what does that mean.  Or you can segment off traffic from particular region to see the buying behavior of types of customers.

How You’d Use This:  This depends on your business but take the opportunity to break down your traffic into meaningful groups if you can.  Some ideas:  Direct traffic vs referral traffic;  New traffic versus repeat visitors; US/Canada visitors versus UK/Europe visitors; Mobile traffic versus desktop computer traffic…

Time on Page (or, Time on Site)

Time on Page (or alternatively, time on site) is an average that tells you how long a visitor spends on a page or the site overall.   Most sites have a widely variable figure for each page – homepages have short on page time as you’ll probably enticing them to move on – while other pages like where you’re making an offer will have longer times.  So, careful with this one.

How You’d Use This:  Overall, time on site is useful as a trend, but to make this data meaningful, you must drill down into specific pages and review the data.  For example, if someone only spends 30 seconds on your about page, but 5 minutes on your sales packages?  That’s not a problem.  So it requires some thought to actually make this data useful.

Visitor

An individual visiting a web site (excludes search engine spiders). Sometimes a media buyer or ad agency will call these” uniques” – short for unique visitors.

How You’d Use This:  Just like I said above on pageviews, this figure is a common way to measure traffic, though I always say it isn’t about how much traffic you have but what that traffic does.  I’d get more into the details, like “we have the same number of visitors each month of the year, but our Google traffic spends a lot more money than our paid traffic.”

Phew! Now that we’ve got all that sorted, hopefully next time you’ll not feel so stressed out about checking your website stats and figures. Speaking of which, have you taken ourFREE website assessment? It’s pretty cool, if I don’t say so myself – and jargon free!

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Earlier this week, we recorded a podcast about the 11 Juicy Reasons why SEO Should Be In Every Marketing Plan. We joked about the commonalities between SEO and yoga, but we weren’t kidding.

The Search Engine Optimization industry has been around for at least a decade now and it’s not going anywhere as it continues to evolve and support the ways consumers around the world use the internet to find relevant information.

With this in mind, let’s make a cheeky comparison between SEO and the ancient discipline of yoga, there are more takeaway lessons than you might assume at first glance! This way to think about SEO is a bit like those Zen and the Art of…books—the philosophies inherent in yoga can be extrapolated into modern life.

More specifically in taking the ancient lessons taught throughout the various yoga practices we can better understand a healthy approach to SEO!

So Let’s Get Zen on SEO!

Yoga Wisdom #1

The karma you create today lays out the future of what you bring into your life in the future.

The Law of Karma is a universal spiritual concept that boils down to the fact that you reap what you sow. We all make very conscious choices in this life and in yogic practice, intentional choice plays a strong roll in what you get back from the universe in the future. Boil this down even future and you get to the point of zero karma accumulation—when you act selflessly.

Now, you’re creating a small business so you might wonder how selflessness applies? Create amazing content and a useful, free message from day one. No SEO marketing plan in the world is going to bring you paying customers (the kind of good business karma you want) for selling a load of crap.

So, how can you give information to sow the best possible seeds for your business? Ask yourself: “What content can I give away for free?” and “How can I make my website more useful than all the others in my niche?” Answer these questions and provide amazing resources on your website and people will want to share your information.

YOUR SEO TAKEAWAY: Build amazing content karma is the first building block for a great SEO plan.

Yoga Wisdom #2

Yoga is the disciplining of a person’s intellect, mind, emotions, and will-power.”

Yoga is a lifestyle choice and a path toward enlightenment; this piece of wisdom seeks to refine and strengthen the core elements of humanity. To take this to the business level, discipline and consistency are integral to a healthy and sustainable SEO practice.

Once you have your SEO strategy planned out, it comes down to a consistent commitment to execution. Your website needs constant guidance to focus the message and ensure that your main keywords and message are clearly presented on your site.

Are you guest-posting and building natural, targeted backlinks to your site on a monthly basis? Don’t skip a month, don’t drop a part of the plan because you don’t see the immediate results. The SEO plan you develop needs to stand the test of time, keep your branding constant, use your specific keywords to describe your business and discipline yourself to consistency.

YOUR SEO TAKEAWAY: Small businesses focusing on the long term will reap the benefits of organic search traffic once Google realizes their site provides high-quality, specific information.

Yoga Wisdom #3

“When the senses are stilled, when the mind is at rest, when the intellect wavers not – then, say the wise, is reached the highest stage. This steady control of the senses and mind has been defined as Yoga. He who attains it is free from delusion.”  – The Kathopnishad

We face a cacophony of distraction in our lives dulling our senses and muddying clear thought. Yoga is one way to fight the overwhelming number of messages and information coming through all of our senses.

Channel this piece of yoga wisdom each morning the moment you sit at your desk. Before you launch into your business tasks shut out the noise, information, and criticism hurled at you the day before. Recenter yourself on your business’ core mission and stop the caterwauling of voices telling you what you must be doing.

Mental stillness is a rarity in our world, so cultivate your peace – when you do that, you’ll find yourself more creative and innovative in your SEO marketing plans. There is a lot of (crappy) SEO advice on the internet—shut that out and execute your strategy. As long as you’re tracking your progress, welcome the change to shut out the peanut gallery.

YOUR SEO TAKEAWAY: I give you full permission to enhance your own calm; don’t be afraid to shut down your email, Twitter, and Facebook and spend one to two hours each week focusing your creativity on spicing up your business’ SEO marketing plan!

Yoga Wisdom #4

Detach yourself from the pursuit of wealth.

Yoga practitioners work toward eliminating personal suffering in their own lives and one of these methods is by severing the emotional connection to wealth. Stop chasing and hunting down money as the primary reason of your existence and you eliminate a lot of your own personal suffering.

On the SEO side of things, desperation to push your site high in the search engines leads to anxiety under the best of circumstances and black hat SEO tactics under the worst. Save yourself that heartache and take the slow and steady route. Google rewards sites providing consistent, valuable content to their readers. Help Google find your valuable content with the right keyword choices (our Get Traffic Now book has a brand new section this time around about finding those keyword families that will drive traffic to your site), and then relax.

It’s not quite the “if you build it they will come mentality,” cyberspace is too vast for that to work, but eliminate the desperation and you can put your focus where it counts: cornerstone content, relationships in your community, guest posting, and social media.

YOUR SEO TAKEAWAY: Log out of Google Analytics, step away from the keyword research tools and trust in a consistent SEO plan to do the hard work for you.

Yoga Wisdom #5

Honor your body and your personal level of practice;
you’re perfect in whatever stage you’re at.

A core tenant of yoga is to honor your personal level of expertise and mastery; teachers encourage you to gently try out new positions, but not to strain and pull muscles—be comfortable with your level of fitness.

Apply this same principle to marketing and SEO for your small business: don’t go beyond your abilities or you’ll almost certainly pull a proverbial muscle. With SEO (and a handful of the tips recommended in the TOP Get Traffic Now SEO guide), you’ll have access to some amazing advice. Take it within reason. If someone mentions your website needs some HTML tweaks, and you’re absolutely crap at HTML—honor that and hire someone instead!

Similarly, if it’s too overwhelming to do all of your tasks this week, give yourself a break. Your organic rankings in the search engines come from patient and consistent building around a set of keywords. One week won’t make or break your SEO marketing plan, so pace yourself and start with what you know, slowly ramping up into less familiar areas of SEO.

YOUR SEO TAKEAWAY: Take small, measurable and daily steps toward your site’s goals; slowly dip your toe into the areas of SEO that are new to you!

Ready to formulate your SEO marketing plan?

Andy and I co-authored a do-it-yourself guide to SEO with a keen focus on the unique challenges and opportunities within the travel and tourism industry. Get Traffic Now: Optimizing Your Site in Just Three Hours a Week takes you through the keyword research all the way to a sustainable weekly SEO marketing plan and we’re re-launching the product this week with a whole set of new improvements (and adjustment for new algorithm changes).Click here to check it out.

Keep in mind, if you purchase Get Traffic Now by Midnight EST Friday, June 24th – that’s TOMORROW – you’ll be able to join a FREE call with Andy and I to ask us anything you want about your business’ SEO strategy. We don’t offer one-on-one SEO consulting anymore, so this is a one-time-only opportunity and we guarantee to answer every question. The live call will take place the second week of July to give you time to review the guide and materials, and will be recorded and emailed to you if you can’t make it. Click here to Get Your Copy so you don’t miss this opportunity!

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In today’s TOP Radio Podcast, we’re pretty excited because we’re announcing the relaunch of our year-old SEO book, Get Traffic Now. Before jumping into the podcast, you might want to be aware of this special offer…

If you purchase Get Traffic Now by Midnight EST Friday, June 24th, you’ll be able to join a FREE call with Shannon and Andy to ask them anything you want about your business’ SEO strategy.

We don’t offer one-on-one SEO consulting anymore, so this is a one-time-only opportunity and we guarantee to answer every question.

The live call will take place the second week of July, to give you time to review the guide and materials, and will be recorded and emailed to you if you can’t make it. Click here to Buy Now so you don’t miss this opportunity!

Ok, about that Podcast…

Tune in and listen, this is perhaps one of our best podcasts ever. 11 Juicy Reasons why SEO (and keyword research) should be included in each and every tourism marketing plan.

Right Click Here to download the MP3.

A quick summary of the call:

We’re relaunching our SEO eBook. But you knew that already.

The 11 Juicy Reasons:

1. Use words and phrases your customers actually use.
2. Name your products & services in a way that your customer would describe them.
3. Find new niche markets you may not have known about.
4. Find new ways to better promote niche markets you already know abou.
5. Identify competitors you didn’t know about.
6. Find can public relations opportunities.
7. Improve your website usability.
8. Improve your brand and recognition and fix the “Oh just Google It” problem.
9. Unearth/refine your unique selling point.
10. Understand buying patterns you may not know about.
11. Find the most common problems people are talking about.

Don’t be overwhelmed – do what you can do, and leave the rest behind.

Please email to to a friend, tweet about it, or share it with your colleagues and biz friends on Facebook. Go on, you know you want to!

And since you’re now morbidly interested in our nifty book, Get Traffic Now, why don’t you click the image below to go and learn more.  Don’t forget – if you buy before Friday June 24th at midnight, you get to ask us ANY question  you want, FREE!

PS – Not sure if Get Traffic Now is for you? Ask us!.

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I can already hear the clamoring and heart palpitations of small business owners all over the world as the headlines on SEO and small business blogs riff about the new Google Instant search engine results as the death of SEO– loud, ugly thoughts swirling through their heads:

“This means all of my SEO efforts have been for naught?!”

“Now my site will never organically place in the search engines!”

“Hole…I just need a hole to hide in…”

Good news! Most of the blogs fell into that wily media tactic of unwarranted sensationalism so they could score a couple extra tweets and stumbles. The new instant results format of the Google search engine is different—that’s without a doubt true.

But it’s still a search engine. And the formula behind the search engine is remarkably similar. Google Instant is faster and will change the way that people are searching, but not the basic fact that you still need your website to be found organically.

Incorporating Instant Search into Your SEO Research

So here’s the deal, because this new format is, well, new, there’s still some speculation about how to best use Google Instant in your SEO and marketing plans.

A lot of niche sites are reporting a spike in the long-tail keyword searches landing on their sites; niche sites (you’re site is niche right?!) have such rich and thorough content on a particular subject that the instant results are actually enhancing the highly targeted search traffic coming to the site in many cases.

This means you can stop worrying now.

As in right now.

Deep breath.

The Google Instant Changes

Google Instant is a harbinger of even more changes in the future but for right now, here are some of the changes Google Instant is bringing to the search space:

-          Page one placement is even more important because searchers are prone to move on much more quickly.

-          Niche and long-tail keyword phrases are more prominent now than ever before – searchers can now hit the backspace button just once and instantly see an entirely new set of specific keyword phrases.

-          Intuitive is winning out – the drop down prediction bar that has present for two years is now even more handy and will be used more frequently in the coming months.

-          The new search system is narrowing down the diversity of search phrases (slightly) – although long tail phrases are prevalent. Now it’s more of the same long-tail and primary keyword phrases being used rather than a whole lot of different ones.

Where is Google Instant Headed?

Some people hate the new Instant results and claim it will die a fast death like Wave and Buzz; others though see this as the next step in intuitive and predictive search. Instant is just one step, Google has other plans for the coming months and years – you can bet that the number of re-tweets and Stumbles you get on a post is going to gain importance soon just like a site’s inbound links. These changes might take place in a few months – or perhaps two years from now; social media is already being used in search results and a logical next step is search-site-social media integration.

Wait, So What Does All of this Mean Precisely?

First off, it means keep doing what you’re already doing. Instant results do not negate the research and efforts you have already done – and if you’ve done the DIY SEO course then you were very thorough with the upfront research, so trust yourself.

What you can do now though, just to check out the new ways people might find your site, are three main actions:

1)      Log out of your Gmail account (otherwise your search patterns and preferences are recorded and hugely affect your results) – in fact, I use a whole separate browser just for checking search results.

2)      In the Google.com search box slowly type your set of keyword phrases – very slowly and watch the results shift as you add more and more letters to the phrases.

3)      Note down any recommended related phrases (especially the long-tail options) that you don’t already use on the site from the predictive drop down box – these will make fantastic blog post topics!

Learn how your site is popping up in the results and how your competitors are fairing too. This exercise is really just to gain a new awareness of your site and take a closer look at the new Instant results. With Google Instant so new to the market really consider tracking the organic search traffic coming into your site through Google Analytics. You’ve already search optimized your website and now it’s time to track and monitor on a monthly basis. The TOP Guide to Google Analytics is incredibly helpful in learning those handful of statistics you should actually be tracking in your Analytics account and how to implement site changes based on those results.

The most important take-away from this is to recognize that SEO is a  “big picture process” – there will be major changes to the Google algorithm at some point (it’s just natural!), there will be SEO tweaks and changes need down the line, but right now, with Google Instant, that is simply not the case – your current DIY SEO strategy will still work!

Learn More

If you aren’t getting the results you want, then click here to check out our super-popular guide, Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization:

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You can never have enough data about your small businesses’ keywords – the phrases that people type into a search engine to find you.  As you probably know already, either through experience or reading through our resources like the bestseller DIY SEO guide, you can get a lot of this knowledge for free with a little sleuthing and hard work.

But many companies overlook one key way to find their perfect keywords…

Ask Your Customers

Change your feedback form to include the question “How would you find us in Google?”  Play around with the wording, but I chose the word “would” intentionally – you don’t really care what keyword eventually worked, as you can find that in Analytics.  You want to know what was the first thing they tried, because that’s the keyword you want to be on.

You also want to make sure they understand you’re asking them about keywords – you might just have to spell it out for them: “what words would you type into Google to find us?”  In my experience, more often than not, when consumers answer one of these referral questions like ‘who told you about us,’ they just say the Internet, which is a charming answer but doesn’t give you anything helpful.

You will also need to play around with where/when you ask this question.  For you, it might be better to ask at the time of taking a booking.  For others it might be useful to do so with a follow-up feedback form.  (You do ask for feedback, right?)

This information only works in aggregate, so don’t start spending time or money for one goofy answer.  Look for trends and commonalities.

To Learn More…

Take advantage of everything you need to know about the world of search in our popular do-it-yourself guide, DIY SEO – Do It Yourself Search Optimization.  It’s an ethical, practical guide to all-things-search and full of other expert tips.

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Search engine optimization is like the poor stepchild of online marketing efforts – no matter how hard the industry tries, it gets shunned and kicked down; SEO is an unloved and often overlooked field.

And you know what? A lot of that negativity is deserved – because there are unethical SEO efforts taking place within every single industry on the internet. Spammers manipulate the search results, pay for unethical inbound links to their sites, and generally bring a bad name to the legitimate SEO industry.

Let’s, for argument’s sake, call this the “dark side” of SEO.

Legitimate and ethical SEO efforts, on the other hand, are the complete opposite of spam. Ethical SEO-ers only optimize their sites for the keywords that actually help searchers find correct, legitimate, and targeted information. The optimization tactics are straightforward and websites build honest and gradual inbound linking campaigns with an aim toward increasing organic search rankings.

For arguments sake, we’ll call this the “light side.”

Using the Jedi Force

I think you see where I am going with this. Just like the Jedi Force in the Stars Wars universe, there are two sides to SEO, and one side is actually useful, ethical, and even needed.

Now let’s take the Star Wars analogy just one step further (only one more, I promise!). The Force enhances the natural physical and mental abilities of a Jedi Knight. SEO is just like that – it’s a way to enhance the potential that already lies within your website.

One of the best ways to perceive SEO efforts is to look at optimization as a way to help the search engines better categorize your site. You have the power to tell the powers-that-be (in this case Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) precisely and succinctly what your site is about. And if you’re being honest, fair, and ethical, then SEO is actually helping make the Web a better place.

The entire purpose of a search engine is to return relevant search results for any given query. Determining relevancy though is tricky – that’s why Google has an incredibly complex and ever-changing algorithm that constantly alters the way it classifies websites. Small online businesses and bloggers using ethical SEO enhance their website’s existing structure and content so that the search engines are better able to classify the site and then send genuinely interested searchers (ie. potential customers) their way.

So what does all of this mean for your website?

Well, if the search engines accurately classify your site (through specific and well-chosen keywords) your site will return better organic search results for these relevant keywords. Spammers will take any keyword traffic; small businesses and bloggers using the light side, though, benefit from funneling targeted search traffic to a useful website with high quality products and services.

Ok, this is the point, where, if I were a sleazy SEO spammer, I would tell you: you’re going to die if you don’t optimize your site for the search engines.” Or perhaps: “you’re going to make thousands of dollars just by using SEO on your site.”

But then I’d be using the dark side the Force, and I’m a good Jedi Knight. So instead I’ll say this: if you haven’t optimized your website for the search engines then you are missing out on an opportunity to enhance your existing content and bring more organic search traffic to your site. You’ve worked hard to build a high quality website with great content and SEO is, quite simply, one of the most underused online marketing sectors within the travel industry.

So, which side are you on?

• Maybe you’ve optimised your site and with the “dark force” and waiting for the day Google pulls you from the rankings.
• Maybe you had no idea optimisation was possible or even necessary.
• Maybe you really want to optimize but don’t know how or can’t afford a lot of money to do it.

If that’s you, then you probably should have a look at the latest TOP Mastery Guide: DIY SEO: Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimisation.

What’s in this Guide?

We’ve included everything you need to get started making improvements to your search rankings. Here’s just a few of the handy hints and tips we’ve gathered for you:

• Why all the acronyms can cause confusion, and an explanation of the terminology you need to know
• How to play by the rules and a warning about ethical practices
• How to build an effective SEO strategy for implementing your hand chosen, market-specific, keywords.
• How to find the specific phrases or words that your potential customers are using in the search engines
• How to make technical changes to improve your website
• Why inbound links and directories can improve your rankings and how to get them
• How to monitor and incorporate search-friendly practice into your everyday routine

It might sound like a lot of information, and it is. But we’ve made sure that everything is written in easy-to-read, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-implement language, just like all of our other TOP guides. There’s also a half hour audio guide to explain how it works, including the worksheets which help keep you organised and on track.

We are expecting these to fly off the shelves as we receive questions almost daily about the search engines, so head on over to the Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimisation page to find out the details and get your copy today.

After all, who wouldn’t want the good Jedi force on their side?

Haven’t you noticed? The good guys always win.

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You’ll be probably aware of the fact that all the major search engines are making it increasingly easier for small tourism business owners to take a proactive approach toward online marketing.

In the last few years, the growing importance of local search and the integration into search results (in Google especially) has created an increasingly fundamental avenue for small tourism businesses to promote awareness about their businesses and gain additional traffic to their website.  However, many business owners simply aren’t aware of the impact that their local listings can have on their site’s traffic.

We would like to introduce you to the concept and importance of local search and provide you with some tips in order to get your tourism business listed inside the major search engines local results with no fluff and no stress!

Why is Local Search Important?

1) Because of vastly different algorithms, local search provides opportunities for small businesses to compete in the listings within larger brands.
2) It provides great brand exposure to highly-focused, location-specific searches.
3) Local search listings are generally presented at the top of the search engine results, making them more likely to get clicks compared to results listed below.

See this example related to a search for “golf tour Edinburgh”:

Wouldn’t you rather be up there at the TOP?

How tourists search…

When dealing with customers that are locally based or are looking for location-specific information, the importance of concentrating on the “local search optimization” of your web site and local directory listings gets more and more important.

As the adoption of smart phones and other mobile technologies increases, the contextual search is supposed to become a phenomenon that will is affecting the way tourists gather information and interact with local tourism businesses.  As more people search for information in the exact moment they need it and relevant to where they happen to be, your listing on the most important search engines maps services is a MUST!

Let’s thus have a look at how you can list your business in either Google, Yahoo or Bing Maps and get the most out of your presence there.

Google Maps Local Business Center

Google quietly upped the local search game by inserting the Google Maps local 10 (listing of 10 local businesses) into search results for local products and services regardless of whether the searcher used a geographic term in the search. It used to be that if you wanted to get local results for a good golf tour operator in Edinburgh, you typed in “Edinburgh Golf Tour” Now, by detecting the location of your IP address Google will add the local result to the search results for the much more generic phrase “golf.”  This makes it more important than ever that your local business is showing up in those Google Maps results!

How do you set up your Google Maps listing?

Google provides very clear instructions on its Maps support page as well as an introductory video that we suggest you to check out:

Breaking news: Google Favourite Place

Google has recently identified over 100 000 businesses in the U.S. as “Favorite Places” based on user reviews on Google Maps and it has rewarded them with QR Stickers – Window Decals like the following:

When snapped with a smart phone camera the two dimensional bar code hyperlinks to the business Google Listing which shows the user reviews and Google Map listing for the business.
This sticker will increasingly represent for tourists a positive signal, since it links a specific business to such a well renowned company as Google is. It will represent a sign of quality which can be compared as a Michelin star, or other awards. Google uses the sticker campaign to ask: “Want to become a Favorite Place on Google?“, reminding business owners to make that their listing on is accurate in the Google Local Business Centre and to work on building reviews.  This makes the problem of everyone is a reviewer even more acute.

Bing and Yahoo Local listing Center

You can easily and quickly register your business in Bing Local Center.

Yahoo provides different options for you to submit your business listing: Basic, Enhanced and Featured.  To find out more and decide what better suits your needs, visit the official yahoo maps page.

Ok…now I’m in… But how do I get the highest ranking in the Maps Listings?

This is a great question! Some important things to keep in mind when setting up your listing:

• Be sure that your local listing has a specific address, associated to a city, including the postal code.
• Add your entry to any appropriate categories available
• Include your product or service keyword in your listing title. For example, you entry could be ‘Edinburgh Golf Tours by Kristen’s Golf Outfitters’
• Monitor reviews and react
• Add photos or videos where possible

And last but not least:

• Optimize your web site for local search with local terms, links, mentions, suburb names, and your business address and phone on every single page.
• Work on getting links back to your website including local phrases in the anchor text e.g.: ”Best Golf Tour in Edinburgh”

What if my business doesn’t have a physical presence?

Well, if we are talking about tourism businesses is very likely that they have a physical location. The company must have been registered under a physical address in any case.  However, if this is not the case (e.g. a business providing snorkelling tours that operates directly from the dock) I would recommend two possible strategies:

1) to just optimize the website for local searches, without adding a listing, making sure that each page is optimized for relevant and location-related keywords.

or,

2) consider partnering with another operator who has a shop presence in the city centre in order to get a map listing: you might think this is an awfully drastic business decision just for a search ranking. However, think about it: if it has other benefits as well, what’s the harm?

To Learn More…

Take advantage of everything you need to know about the world of search in our popular do-it-yourself guide, DIY SEO – Do It Yourself Search Optimization.  It’s an ethical, practical guide to all-things-search.

If you prefer some one-on-one support for your search engine marketing needs, our Search Engine Jumpstart package might be just the thing to increase your base of paying customers in 2010.

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What are the greatest challenge in search engine optimisation that small travel businesses will face in 2010?

This is the question that I’ve been reflecting upon in last few days, conscious of all the innovation and changes that every single day affect the way we work with the search engines for travel and tourism marketing.

When we speak about search engine optimisation, or SEO, the only certainty that we have is what we have done in the past.  For the future, we will know exactly what is working and achieve good results, through constant testing, mistakes and efforts.

However, I think 2010 will be a big year for travel and tourism marketing when it comes to search.

Google Caffeine

2010 changes start with the full implementation of Caffeine, the new Google algorithm, the core of the company’s technology.  Google promises that the new search tool will improve the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search.

Tests conducted recently by Mashable have showed that the “New Google” aims at providing an increasingly better search experience for the user.  Early reports state:

1) Caffeine often doubled the speed: users will get results faster (though many web users will not notice this).
2) New Google relies more on keywords: the algorithm has more reliance on keyword strings to produce better results.
3) Search is moving into real-time: Being able to get info on breaking events is clearly a priority for Google. With both Twitter and Facebook launching real-time search engines, they need to respond.
4) Increasing attention to links:   It’s also very likely that the new algorithm will put increasing attention and precision on the Link Popularity, thus better filtering the real value from the noise in order to provide better results and higher quality.

Caffeine focuses on increasing speed, relevancy, accuracy, and volume ofcontent — things that Microsoft really hit on when it released its search engine.  Of course from these tests, is still quite hard to understand how Caffeine will revolutionise the way small businesses need to react to protect/increase their own search engine rankings.

Bing

And then of course we see another big player, Bing.  According to a Nielsen report delivered last September, the growing rate for the Microsoft Search Engine is faster than any other search engine. It was reported Bing had 10.7% of the total search market, up 2% from the month before. Today, its share is somewhere around 8-10%.
In the last few months Microsoft has worked hard on marketing to promote Bing, but also has introducing great features like visual search and voice support.  It’s clear is that Microsoft can’t afford to lose the battle, and for travel search marketers competition between engines can only be a good thing. What is also clear though, is that for travel search marketers, the job just got a lot more interesting.

The Focus is Changing

There’s a urging pressure to abandon the pure “ranking” as most important search engine optimisation metric. In fact, search result pages themselves are changing, and many more are the elements that need to be included in your kit while developing an effective strategy for your tourism website: maps, news, photos, videos and, most important, there’s real time!

Search engines are evolving into “answer engines”, and a web page or a document can’t just contain only text, but, according to these latest innovation, it’s important to create, include and optimize also other types of content, in other to enable the search engine to offer a greatest variety of answers to the travel searcher.

The increasing importance of real-time search results and the latest inclusion of Twitter and Facebook results in the search results provide an additional warning sign to small businesses: start to actively using social media and optimize content for them.

So what your priorities should be?

Search Engine Optimisation is no more simply on page optimization, it has to be approached in a more holistic way. Specifically:

1) In the past few years, SEO has been about all-Google, all the time, so the rule of thumb was to optimize for Google, and the rest pretty much takes care of itself. This advice is still valid.  However, in order to keep up with the latest innovation, it’s a good think to monitor both the Google Webmaster Central as well as the Bing Webmaster Centre.

And Rember that the basics rules of search optimisation are still greatly important for both Bing and Google, thus:
- Make it easier for search engines to index your website, by having a “sitemap” and a good internal link structure
- Work hard on embedding keywords in pages
- Get quality inbound links

2) Focus on the real results: conversions. Pure ranking are not reliable anymore (third position can lead to extremely good results or either very poor ones…). You can have great rankings for many keywords! But what if your customers aren’t actually searching for those or your content doesn’t give the customer good enough reason to actually purchase?  Content must be tweaked, tightened, and tweaked again.

3) Leverage Social Media. By using simple tools like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube not only you’ll increase your chances to appear in Google or Bing search results but also your customers will notice that you’re willing to start an open and authentic conversation with them when you take the time to upload, optimize and share new content! Ask your guests to tell their story on TripAdvisor – Embed a link in emails, tag lines, Websites, business cards.

Here’s the truth: you don’t need to be a techie to achieve fantastic results!

To Learn More…

Take advantage of everything you need to know about the world of search in our popular do-it-yourself guide, DIY SEO – Do It Yourself Search Optimization.  It’s an ethical, practical guide to all-things-search.

If you prefer some one-on-one support for your search engine marketing needs, our Search Engine Jumpstart package might be just the thing to increase your base of paying customers in 2010.

Photo by: elsie

Other people who liked this article liked these too:

How's your website doing? Our TOP resources make your online presence work smarter. Check out the latest news and tips: http://www.travelonlinepartners.com

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