Five Steps to Building a Search Site Persona

It’s easy for online marketers to become distracted by the search engines and forget the real reason they’re doing SEO in the first place: the customer. Customer demand is the driving force behind search and must be the foundation for your SEO strategy.

Whether you’re a SEO newbie or already running a few SEO campaigns, it’s important to take a step back and determine what techniques really align with your customers’ needs.

Similar to a marketing persona, creating a search persona helps marketers to accurately identify their target customer, to understand how users are actually searching for their business online, and to ultimately drive higher conversion. This isn’t a very time-consuming process, and will have a significant impact on your marketing efforts.

1. Know Your Target Audience

Identify a target audience that is most likely to turn into customers. Ask yourself: Who's my perfect buyer? For any businessperson (regardless of SEO), this is something you should be able to answer.

Example: Let’s say you’re a shoe supplier looking to grow your online audience, specifically for women’s athletic shoes. Your perfect buyer is a woman, age 18 to 35, searching for Adidas, Asics, New Balance, Saucony, or Nike running shoes.

2. Understand Your Audience's Pain Point(s)

How would your target customer articulate their need for this in terms of keywords? How do they search? Determine the queries that are used by your target audience, are aligned with your business goals, and appear in significant enough volumes.

 

Example: Your customer is looking to buy new running shoes. You've decided your target keyword phrase is "womens running shoes." How do you reach your target customer, though? Where is she searching? Perhaps, you determine she uses Bing to do her price comparison shopping, browses Zappos.com, and only searches at night when she gets off work (you could use this timing criteria if building PPC campaigns).

3. Provide Real Solutions

Create great content that’s well optimized for the search engines, but also meets the needs of your target customer and provides calls-to-action that encourage users to further explore and engage with your product or service.

Example: Design a landing page that’s optimized for conversion, such that it includes actionable content (e.g., descriptions, images, and reviews for the shoes) and calls-to-action that allows the user to take action (e.g. “Add to shopping cart” or “Purchase now”).

4. Be Compelling

Offer a call to action that compels the searcher to dive deeper into your conversion funnel. This might be a discount code or an online form. Basically, a feature that allows you to keep in contact with a user and offers them sort of incentive to stay engaged with your website and product or service.

Example: Perhaps this is offering users multiple related running shoe options as they interact with search results. For example, if a user clicks on a pair of Adidas women’s running shoes, perhaps you include images of the rest of the shoes you have in stock that are a similar style and color to the ones the user has shown interest in.

5. Know Your Data

Make sure you’re regularly tracking performance metrics that help demonstrate the efficacy of these campaigns.

Example: As this shoe supplier, you should make sure you’re tracking specific metrics for each user’s visit to your website, including rank and traffic for your target keyword phrase.

One of the most overlooked aspects of this process is to truly try to understand the target searcher’s agenda. Think of yourself as you search for something. All the pages you bounce off of, because they aren't relevant, trustworthy, or are too complex for one reason or another.

Search persona only works in context with business goals, and content that was designed for them. Doing only one thing out of the overall list above won’t bring the desired results.

Now that you’ve built your search persona, examine your website’s content and existing SEO campaigns and make any adjustments necessary to align with the criteria you’ve identified in this process.

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23:03 | 0 comments | Read More

Google Advertise "Get as Googlebot" URL Submission Tool

Google has updated his tools for submitting a advertise URL for indexing. The new device, that has titled "Fetch as Googlebot," lets the users have their site examined more quickly. This may have even been used to clear out the currently cached version of your site.

Fetch's Functionality & limits

If you have preferred to call Google's attention to new sites or pages more quickly, the "Fetch as Googlebot" characteristic is what you have been hoping for us. Fetch lets you see the site exactly as Google's crawler does &, more importantly, lets you tell Google to index that page. If you have updated a huge amount of content or are submitting a new site, you may have even submitted the fetched page & all the pages connected to it.

Most probably to prevent spamming, Google have a limited the total number of "fetches" to 50 per week. When submitting a page & all pages connected to it, there is a huge limit of ten per month.

If you have paid attention to Google over the last year or, you know that their ability to index content quickly has improved dramatically; they are literally hopped up on caffeine. That means you don't must wait long for Google to index your site anyway. So why bother submitting?

When You Ought to Use This Tool

There are far more important scenarios to think about, though.

On the Google Webmaster Weblog entry discussing the issue, the company gave a couple scenarios. For example, in case you have a page with content for an event that is days away, it would be wise to make use of Fetch.

Second, in case you require to get rid of the currently cached version of your site, you can do so with Fetch. Telling Googlebot to take a glance at the site will usually have the content re-checked within 24 hours. Your earlier site version will then replace the cached version, allowing you to hide embarrassing or incorrect content.

22:32 | 0 comments | Read More

Google + Video’s | Latest Google Sparks Video

Google+
Google+ is a new social project which Google is testing and will roll out soon.
Here is Google plus Link


Google+ is in limited Field Trial
At the moment, we're testing with a small number of people, but it won't be long before the Google+ project is ready for everyone. Leave us your email address and we'll make sure that you're the first to know when we're ready to invite more people.



1. Google+ is currently available on an invitation-only basis.

2. Google does not consider it a Face book competitor (at least publicly).

3. Google+ is currently available for download as an app in the Android Market.

4. When you download that app, it splits off the “Huddle” feature as a separate app.

5. Users can post status updates, and these appear on the Google Profile under a tab called “Posts”. The +1′s and Buzz tabs remain separate. I have to wonder if we’ll see Buzz and Posts merge eventually.

6. What is available now is “just the beginning” according to Google. These are just the first features or presumably many more to come.

7. Circles is one current feature. It lets you share things with different people (kind of like Face book Groups) but with a very different user interface.

8. Another feature is Sparks. This looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so “when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share.” Filter Bubble anyone?



Hangouts are another feature. It’s basically group video chat. Google describes it as “the unplanned meet-up.”
10. Instant uploads is a mobile-specific feature. Photos upload themselves as you take them, and are stored in a private area on the cloud.
11. Huddle is another group-conversation feature for mobile. Essentially, it’s group chat.
The Stream
12. The stream is basically the equivalent of the Face book news feed.
13. When you share something with Google+ it’s added to your stream and the stream of everyone you shared with.
14. The stream shows you what all of your Circles have shared with you.
15. If you mention a user, using the “+” or “@” symbols, the person may receive a notification that you mentioned them.
16. You can see who specific posts were shared with in the stream – whether they were shared publicly, to extended circles, or a limited group.
17. You can filter the stream by specific Circles.
18. You can chat directly in the stream
19. You can report inappropriate content.
20. You can search for people from the search box at the top of the stream.
21. Soon, Google says you’ll be able to search the stream itself from the search box.
22. If you leave comments on a post, you can edit or delete them.
23. The same goes for posts, but you can’t edit a post’s sharing settings after the post has been shared. However, you can delete the post and share again to different circles.
24. You can “reshape” posts made by others (like retreating).
25. You can “mute” a post. This will let you stop receiving updates from a post, like if the comments get out of control for example.
The Google Social Network
26. You can use the “Google+ Bar” that appears at the top of various Google products as your connection to the social network.
27. When you’re signed in you’ll see your full name or email address displayed with a photo or avatar next to it, to help you identify which account you’re currently signed in to.
28. If you’ve enabled multi sign-in you can sign in to two different Google accounts and switch between them using the Google+ bar.
29. When you sign up for Google+, you’re also signing up for Picasa Web Albums, so all photos and videos uploaded to Google+ (including from your phone via Instant Upload) will also be available in Picasa Web Albums.
30. You can use the Google +1 button from the stream.
31. You can have a ton of friends on Google+. Robert Scoble quickly added over 1,000.
32. The central user interface is very Facebook-esque.
33. Google+ quickly became the butt of a lot of jokes (and even cartoons), but has also received a great deal of praise thus far.
34. With Google+ Google adds a “You” link to the recently redesigned (painted black) navigation bar across Google properties
35. You can view public Google+ content without actually being invited (Danny Sullivan has a guide on how to view it )
36. China is already blocking Google+. That didn’t take long.
37. Invitations have been listed on eBay.
38. There are already privacy concerns about Google+ but the Privacy Guide can be found here.
39. According to the Financial Times article, you can share something within a closed “Circle,” but someone from that circle can then reshare it with anyone, and even make it public.

22:25 | 1 comments | Read More

Google updates various Logins to nowadays allow 10

Google has rolled out a used update to its Google Apps Accounts which now lets you now login with up to ten multiple accounts. Allowing you to access your Google Calendar & Gmail alterative accounts simultaneously.

Historicallyin the past the limited on multiple accounts was set to but regrettably the new update does still restrict a few Google features to login. Such as AdSense, AdWords, Blogger & App Engine to name a few.

You are already signed in to the maximum number of accounts. In the event you need to make use of another account you must sign out of all Google Accounts then sign in to the account you need.
Three times you hace signed in to your ten accounts, Google automatically display a mistake message:

In the event you would like to enable multiple sign-ins you need to enable the feature within your Google accounts settings. More information is available from the Google support weblog.

22:05 | 0 comments | Read More

A foretaste of Gmail’s latest glance look

We get lots of great feedback about how Gmail helps you be more efficient, keep in contact with relatives and friends, and get work done. We have saved you from forgetting attachments and made definite that you got the right Bob. Over the years, adding limitless features to Gmail has made it an increasingly powerful communication hub, but along the way the interface has also become more cluttered and sophisticated.

That is of the reasons we are embarking on a series of interface updates to help strip out unnecessary clutter and make Gmail as stunning as it is powerful. This is part of a Google-wide hard work to bring you an experience that is more focused, elastic, and effortless across all of our products. The changes are not going to happen all directly. They know that you love and care about Gmail as much as they do, and we will be working on these upgrades gradually over the next few months to permit lots of time to understand and incorporate your feedback in to the evolving design.

We are kicking things off with new themes for you to try out as a type of sneak peek at what we are up to. Beginning today, you will see the Preview and Preview (Dense) themes in the Themes tab in Gmail Settings. Why themes? Our new interface will finally expand dynamically to accommodate different screen sizes and user preferences, but until then you can pick the knowledge density that you prefer.

21:51 | 0 comments | Read More

Astral Eclipse Google Logo & Other Eclipse reporting

Google's a giant fan of the open sky, when awesome things are happening in it. A Google Doodle, as well as heaping scoops fulls of other access points from Google, give users the chance to check out today's lunar eclipse.

The Astral Eclipse Google Doodle

Live from Google's home page, users can see a Google logo that illustrates the current position of the total lunar eclipse (taking place from 11:20 a.m. PT and lasting for over an hour). While users in select portions of Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, South The united states, and Asia can see the eclipse for themselves, the doodle allows somebody the whole world round to check out the current status.
The slider on the doodle itself lets users check out the various states that the eclipse was in earlier in the day. Google is also showing a special box on the search results page after you click on the logo, telling you that the eclipse is in progress and where it can be viewed from.
This is more of lots of animated doodles introduced in the last years, demonstrating the search giant's increasing ambition in this minor feature. It is expected that the doodle will be available for all of today and will become available in archived format in the near future.

Other Google Lunar Coverage

The doodle is not the only way that users can use Google to keep track of the lunar eclipse. Here are Google's other resources on this topic:

•    Thanks to a partnership with the Sloop Space Camera, users can check out an interface that gives footage, commentary, and community discussion.
   
•     Sloop Space Camera also has an Android app that provides images on the eclipse.
   
•    Users can watch a live stream and some condensed videos of the eclipse on the Google YouTube page.
   
•    This freshly released Google Earth K ML adds the eclipse to the "sky" layer of Earth.

20:59 | 0 comments | Read More

Google start on Its Groupon Competitor Wednesday

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has announced that the search giant will launch its Group on competitor on Wednesday, beginning with Portland.

The news that Google is getting in to the everyday deals space is not a surprise. Google tried & failed to acquire Group on for $6 billion last year. A few months later, Mash able exclusively learned that Google was developing a Group on competitor called Google Offers.

The massive selling point for Google Offers is that it will integrate seamlessly with Google Wallet, the company is NFC-based payment method launching this summer. In lieu of printing out a coupon or bar code, done offers are put in to a user is Google Wallet, where they are automatically saved & redeemable. Finally they are going to be utilized automatically through NFC.

At the D9 Conference in Palos Verdes, Illinois, Schmidt & Stephanie Tilenius, Google is VP of commerce, demonstrated the company is new product. It is like Group on in that it provides users an everyday deal from thousands of merchant partners. Google showed off a deal for $10 worth of Floyd is coffee for $3 on stage.

Google Offers will be obtainable Wednesday in Portland & finally will roll out to New York, San Francisco & other cities in the work of the summer.

21:44 | 0 comments | Read More