Google defines good linking and bad linking

December 19, 2006

Google has laid down the defining lines in the battle of link building and the value of link popularity. In summary, the old motto, an earned link is the best link, still outranks almost any form of link building imaginable.

Essentially, if a link is earned due to quality, ideas, originality, or via establishing a site, persona, or business as a resource; chances are, that link is going to be of high value in the Google ranking algorithm:

Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity:

- Classically this involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice.

- A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites.

- One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com.

- Another example is to earn a reputation in a certain field by building an authority through services such as http://answers.yahoo.com.

Google’s advice is: Always focus on the users and not on search engines when developing your optimization strategy. Ask yourself what creates value for your users. Investing in the quality of your content and thereby earning natural backlinks benefits both the users and drives more qualified traffic to your site.

Get the full story at the Offical Google Webmaster Central Blog

Flash, AJAX, Usability, and SEO

By Shari Thurow | December 18, 2006

At the Chicago Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference a few weeks ago, I was privileged to speak on a wide variety of topics, including how both Flash and AJAX (define) can have a positive or negative effect on SEO (define) efforts.

The audience was a mixed group. Many Web developers and designers were in the audience, of course, as well as SEO professionals and other online marketers. Noticeably missing, however, were people who were educated, trained, or experienced in user-centered design (UCD). Quite frankly, I was a bit stunned at the lack of understanding about SEO and UCD, both from those on my respected panel and from the audience. "Everybody wants the 'enhanced' experience" seemed to be the prevailing attitude.

What's this 'enhanced experience' SEO professionals, developers, designers, and online marketers honestly believe people desire? Are they really testing, measuring, and verifying this belief, or was I listening to a group of people who believe their own hype?

Optimizing Animated Content

Don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly aware I have a big ego, so I'm always amazed when I meet people who have bigger egos than mine. However, I don't assume end users think and act the same way I do on a Web site.

For example, I love Flash. I love to design in Flash. I also love AJAX and have begun implementing it on a number of sites. I've seen Flash and AJAX used well individually and together, such as teaching people how to construct shelves on the IKEA Web site. And I've seen Flash used poorly.

However, Flash and AJAX can be confusing to users and search engines because the same URL delivers different content. URL structure is important to search engines because it provides a means of accessing content. It also provides a sense of place to site visitors.

Even though search engines currently can't access (or have difficulty accessing) the content within Flash or invisible layers, the problem isn't always access. The problem is often content. A few years ago, Yahoo analyzed the content contained within Flash movies and Web sites and found the content wasn't really useful. Extracting the links from these layers proved more useful.

So how should Web site owners determine whether or not to use Flash or AJAX on their Web sites?

Usability Testing, Focus Groups, and Web Analytics

I'm a usability professional. I don't throw bells and whistles on a Web page because I think they're cool. I want to know if my client's target audience believes the bells and whistles are useful (user confidence) and if they actually use them for the intended purpose (task completion).

Usability testing is the best way to determine user confidence and task completion. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues have limited or no experience in this area. They use focus groups and Web analytics as evidence to support their beliefs.

A focus group measures opinions. Opinions have limited effect on task completion. I can think a Flash movie or AJAX effect is pretty nifty, but I may not necessarily "Add to Cart," "Register for Class," or "Subscribe to Newsletter." Additionally, there's a group (or herd) mentality that can affect opinion. For example, if there are 12 people in a focus group and one person really disagrees, that person can often be persuaded to go along with the group because she doesn't want to be perceived as the naysayer.

My colleagues also use Web-analytics data as supporting evidence. The problem with this is users aren't presented with other options. If users are presented with only one option, who's to say whether they might select the less animated interface? Who's to say whether they'll complete the desired task, and why? Furthermore, Web site owners don't hear users think out loud. They don't directly hear their source of confusion (if any). All they see in analytics are click streams.

Though both user perception and click streams are important measurement tools, they're not task-oriented. Usability testing measures how effectively participants complete a desired task. If there are roadblocks to completing the desired task, such as an inappropriately named navigation label, these roadblocks can be eliminated so the site satisfies both user and business goals.

Listening to Users

Perhaps one of the most enlightening usability experiences I had was seeing how IT department heads interact with Web sites. One might think decision makers in an IT department would appreciate the enhanced experience Flash, AJAX, and other animation technologies offer.

I was mistaken.

Our firm has performed many usability tests on Flash- and AJAX-enhanced sites. Below are some of the actual comments we received from one-on-one usability tests:

• "The site wastes space. I am very busy. I hate it when sites like this waste my time."
  
  
• "I want to get down to business. I want to see things. What's with this [expletive] animation thing?"
  
  
• "This area takes up way too much space and doesn't give me any information. Where'd the navigation go?"
  
  
• "I don't like the navigation. When I move away from it, it stays there. It's just very confusing."
  
  
• "I've seen sites where they use that technology well. You can click on parts of the graphic and it takes you somewhere. This graphic is too big, does not tell me anything, and keeps up this annoying flashing when I am trying to do something else."

Overall, these participants found the Flash- and AJAX-enhanced features quite annoying. And that's just what business owners don't want: to annoy the very people who make purchasing decisions for their products and services.

Conclusion

Get with the program, developers and marketers. Don't assume your target audience wants an enhanced experience, not even advanced Web users. Analyze your target audience's search behavior. Don't skip SEO's usability aspect.

If you find your target audience genuinely wants the enhanced experience, then by all means give it to them. People will link to sites that provide them with easy access to desired information, which will have a positive SEO impact on link development.

If I can put my ego aside and not use Flash and AJAX when they aren't needed, you can, too.

Why the Design of Your Hotel Web Site Matters - By Neil Salerno

	It's more than just Personal Taste
With so many hotels relying on the Internet to help fill their rooms, it amazes me that there are still so many hotel web sites that are not designed to produce room reservations. After-all isn't that the primary reason why hotel sites are published to the Internet to begin with? It's also shocking that so many web site designers don't have a clue about search engines, how they work, nor how and why people select a hotel in which to stay. So much of the planning and designing of a productive hotel web site starts with the intent of the designer, when the site is being designed. Does the designer understand the purpose of a hotel site? Stephen Covey, in his best seller 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People', teaches us to 'Begin with the end in mind'. With hotel web sites, the 'end' to keep in mind is that a hotel web site must be designed to 'sell' reservations; not simply to be an online brochure. Many people have asked me why I feel so strongly that it takes knowledge of hotel marketing to design a productive hotel web site. It's because an effective hotel web site must incorporate the basic hotel marketing principles of location, facilities, and attractions (both business and leisure); and, most importantly, the site must include dominant well-written sales text. While a hotel brochure is designed to describe facilities and services, it is not relied upon to 'close' sales. The purpose of a web site is far more complex. It must be designed to create search engine popularity, so the site can be found using many different search terms; it must create interest in the hotel's location, facilities, and services; and, most importantly, its text must be written to convert 'lookers into bookers'. It's Location, Location, and Location... With few exceptions, people visit an area but stay at a hotel because of its location, nearby attractions and facilities. Knowing this, it makes pure common-sense to highlight your hotel's location. It is always amazing to me to see so many hotel web sites which give no clue where the hotel is located; some even without a posted address. Your location is a very special place. Your location has its own special attributes which attract visitors from all over the World. Your web site should prominently highlight your location's special attributes and provide a reason to visit that location. Simply listing your hotel's address is not enough; generating new visitors to your hotel's location is most important; sell destination first, your hotel second. Having a Web Presence In the beginning of the Internet's popularity, only ten or so years ago, many hotels had the foresight to take advantage of the opportunity to have a presence on this radically new marketing medium. But the Internet has changed a lot since then; we learned that merely having a presence on the Internet does not necessarily generate reservations. Many of these early sites were designed by pure technicians, or in some cases the owner's nephew, with a flair for design and some techno-knowledge of how to publish a web site on the Internet. Some sites were good; many were terrible, but in those days, few hoteliers knew how much the Internet would impact our industry and they knew even less about how to design a hotel web site to sell reservations. During its maturation process, the number of web sites on the Internet has grown exponentially and search engines (the heart of the Internet) have been refined and improved; and are constantly being improved today. If a site cannot be found easily, it's useless. The Internet's explosive growth has been unprecedented in our lifetime. Google, one of the Internet's most popular search engines indexes more than 6.8 billion web sites. World population is 6.6 billion people; that's more than one site for each and every one of us! Without search engines, navigating the net would be nearly impossible. At this point you may be wondering what web site design has to do with search engines; the answer is everything. Search engine requirements must be built into the site's design. Keep in mind that search engines, at the present time, read text; images and graphics are, for the most part, invisible to them. Search engines seek-out sites which contain the words contained in the search term. Many web site designers do an excellent job of making web sites look attractive, but fail miserably to comply with search engine and hotel sales and marketing needs. It's what your site 'says' and 'how it says it' that creates popularity with search engines and converts visitors into reservations. Some Web Site Common-Sense Hotel site designers, even those with hotel marketing experience, tend to be very right-brained creative types. Don't assume that they always know all those key factors which make your hotel's location unique and popular. When you select a designer for your site, either new or replacement site, make a list of sales features and keep them in priority order. A good designer knows the prime web site real estate to occupy those most important details of your location and hotel. Remember, it's not just what you say; it's how you say it. Begin with the end in mind; the 'end' is to generate reservations not just increase the number of visitors to your site. I know it's tempting to let your designer create a work of art; after-all you have all those beautiful images of your hotel, but it's often their lack of hotel sales knowledge which will doom your site to obscurity and mediocre performance. Good simple navigation of your site is also essential. Basic rule; don't make users learn how to navigate your web site. Understanding how and why people choose a hotel is the first ingredient in designing a hotel web site. It is not a matter of simply describing all your hotel's attributes; it is how they are presented that really counts. Take an Objective Look at Your Site If your site is not producing a good volume of reservations, it's probably time to have a marketing analysis done of your site. A site analysis can reveal why your site is performing poorly; often some minor adjustments can make a substantial difference in your sales results. It can also reveal a need to scrap your current site in favor of a new, properly designed, one. Are you measuring your site's conversion rate? If not, why not? Don't be fooled by simply measuring the number of visitors to your site. Most hotel web sites only convert less than four percent of visitors into reservations; increasing that ratio is the ultimate goal. Properly written and placed sales text can make a huge difference. A web site is a living breathing sales tool which needs to be adjusted constantly to keep up with changes in your market, your hotel, and the ever-changing search engine parameters. Your web site is generating data and statistics, which you can use to improve your web site and its performance. Ask your web master to produce and evaluate this data. Sometimes there may be a small additional fee, but it is very worthwhile. Your web site is capable of producing 30% to 70% of your total reservations; get it to work for you.

Business travelers book on hotel brand websites

HotelMarketing.com

December 07, 2006

An impressive 44% of business travelers visiting hotel brand websites are “bookers” and actually make or change a reservation, according to a new joint study from the HSMAI Foundation and iPerceptions that measured business travelers in the mid-scale hotel segment. Furthermore, 4 in 10 of website visitors are first timers, and only 22.1% mid-scale business travelers abandon their plan to make an online transaction versus 31% for leisure travelers.

Those are just a few highlights from the first-ever edition of a unique, quarterly web metrics report of experience and satisfaction benchmarks, “The Voice of the Hotel Customer,” which focused specifically on the business traveler in the mid-scale hotel sector. The research addresses issues of website satisfaction, such as ease of use, convenience, depth of information, relevant content, if the website encourages return and responsiveness to customer needs.

“What’s so groundbreaking about the study is that the results can be used to develop viable benchmarking within the hotel industry, and to illustrate trends and insights into the attitudes of hotel website visitors regarding their online experiences,” states Robert A. Gilbert, CHME, CHA, president and CEO of HSMAI. “These reports are a starting point for the industry as they form a baseline against which a company can compare itself after it implements changes.”

“This first quarterly report represents a significant advancement in measuring and benchmarking the impact of customer word of mouth and feedback in the hospitality sector,” explains Daniel Taras, vice president, business development at iPerceptions. “Capturing the voice of your customer is critically important for companies that want to build their businesses in the always-on and always-connected online environment,” he adds.

“Web marketers at individual companies can benchmark their own customer’s experience to the overall mid-scale sector within the report to determine where the weaknesses and strengths are in their website,” notes Cindy Estis Green, managing partner of The Estis Group and author of the report. “As the scores are filtered by meaningful customer segments, web marketers can easily make changes directed to specific market segments and then go back to see if they were able to move the needle on the scores.”

The first HSMAI/iPerceptions Quarterly Report was released today at HSMAI’s 7th Travel Internet Strategy Conference in Sunny Isles, FL. Highlights of the report findings will be published in the HSMAI Marketing Review magazine and the HSMAI Foundations’s eConnect member information portal.

One of the study’s more important revelations is that it shows where there is the most difference between a booking that happens and one that does not. “The biggest difference by those who complete their booking, and those who do not, revolves around whether they feel the website enables them to find what they are looking for and secondarily, whether they can find a full enough range of the information they seek,” according to the report.

This analysis centered on the business traveler sub-set of the moderate hotel brands database. The database included lookers (those who went to the website to get hotel information, research/compare rates or other) and bookers (those who went to the website to book/change a reservation).

The summary states: “There is no doubt that a higher level of engagement yields higher satisfaction levels with a website. The most frequent website users who come to book/change a reservation scored websites consistently higher than others and suggests that higher satisfaction produces greater usage.”

The lookers tended to evaluate the attributes in similar rank order as the bookers, however, the overall scores for lookers’ evaluations were lower, according to the report.

Bookers were much more engaged and rated the sites higher, except those first time bookers, who, like first time lookers had many issues that implied they would not be using the website in the future, didn’t think they were saving money with it and were not likely to use it for general trip planning.

The iPerceptions research is based on data from 29 major hotel brands; 17 of which fall into this report’s realm of mid-scale hotels.

Other critical data generated from the survey:

- 56% of mid-scale business travelers have membership in rewards programs versus 52% industry-wide among business travelers;

- Four in ten (41%) mid-scale business travelers are first timers to a hotel website versus 44% industry-wide; and only 25% are frequent users versus 35% frequent users industry-wide;

- Site visitors who changed/booked a reservation rated the mid-scale hotel websites highest of any other customer group, scoring a rating 7.17 (out of 10) versus the overall business traveler group which was 6.95. Frequent site visitors (6+ visits in last six months) rated the websites overall at a high 7.75.

- When comparing individual attributes against the overall mid-scale business traveler benchmarks, there are significant differences between website usage levels. First timers are considerably more likely than more frequent users to say that mid-scale hotel websites are not the place they would likely start their trip planning or that mid-scale websites encourage them to return. They are much less likely than frequent users to think that the website can enable them to find what they are looking for.

- The more committed and engaged in using the site, the more likely a business traveler said the site was their primary trip planner and that it saved money in hotel rates;

- While first timers in every category gave all aspects of the website the lowest ratings, their best scores were for navigation and content related attributes.