BrightCite

By: Curt Conrad
President, BrightCite Inc.

What Happens When You Type Keywords Into A Search Engine?
A search engine sends a "spider" (AKA "bot") to crawl the servers on the world wide web to find relevant documents to bring back to its index or database. In the index, it filters documents according to the search engine’s rules (such as, to weed out duplicates) and stores those which meet its relevance requirements.

Search engines use mathematical formulas to evaluate the relevance of the websites in its index to what you typed in the search box.  In a nanosecond, the search engine checks millions of websites for your keywords and ranks them based on how many times your keywords appear in a web page’s title and meta tags, content and links. It also checks how many times the keywords appear websites that are linked to yours.

Does Your Website Pass The Test?
This is a simplified explanation, but the bottom line is the websites that pop up on the first page of the search results have passed thousands of tests related to your entered keywords.  The results are ranked by what the search engine technology and formulas believe are the most relevant websites to your search.

High Rank Can Mean Higher Profit
As a small business, being ranked in the top 5 results positions (especially #1) for a customer related search is extremely profitable.  You are essentially moved to the front of the line for the customers attention.  And because there are so many companies competing, you have a clear advantage.  So needless to say, optimizing your website to rank higher in search engines is a smart move.

How Does SEO Help Improve Your Search Engine Rank?
The goal of Search Engine Optimization is simply to make it as easy as possible for search engines to measure/index your site. In other words, it’s about helping your website pass as many relevance tests as possible for strategic keywords.  Fundamentally, SEO is about managing 4 things:

1. Addressing the limitations of the search engine "bots" with crawler-friendly site architecture, as well as addressing indexing filter issues.  (Using clean HTML, etc…)
2. Making the site accessible to searchers by identifying keywords most used by your target audience and positioning the keywords — sensibly — into the text of your website. (Including the terms searchers are most likely to use for a search into your website tags and content)
   
3.  Attracting inbound links from authoritative sites that have strong traffic and relevance and targeting those links to searchers’ interests. (With valuable content that others want to pass along and including keywords in the links)
4. Analyzing visitor activity on your site — both human and "bot" – to look for ways to improve the search experience for both. (Using analytics to measure how visitors are behaving on your site)
   

When you do this right, you help the search engines do a better job serving their visitors the information they seek.  In turn the search engines display your site to the visitors you seek. It’s a win/win deal!

Why Search Engines Want You To Optimize Your Site
The success of search engines like Google are predicated on the relevance of the results they provide for you and other searchers.  If Google search results did not help you find what you are looking for you certainly wouldn’t use them as your search engine.  That would mean a lot of lost ad revenue for Google.  So it’s in their best interest to give you the best search results possible.  Google even posts SEO guidelines that help them help you…

Why Getting Good Search Engine Rank On Google Is Important To Your Company’s Profits
Check out some stats:

• Studies reveal that 70% of searchers click on natural or organic listings. But with Google, that jumps to 87%.
  
• Nearly 50% of all searches are done on Google — more than half, if you add in AOL, which displays Google search results.
  
• Of 1000 searchers, 555 (55.5%) will use Google or AOL, and 483 (87%) of these will click on links that are not "sponsored".
  
• Of the remaining 445 non-Google searchers, 311 (70%) will choose organic listings over paid.
  
• Altogether that’s 794 out of 1000 searchers! Who wants to pass up that many visitors?
  
• 2005 research showed that 60% of searchers click on one of the top three organic listings if it interests them. 

Bottom line: it pays to rank well in the search engines.  The time to get started with your optimization efforts is now.  One of the measures Google uses to determine relevance is how long a website has been in existence and its historic rankings (domain age).  So just like a good investment strategy, the optimization efforts you make today can end up compounding your results over time.

By: Curt Conrad
President, BrightCite Inc.

Your customer is looking for something online.  Your business wants to sell them something online.  Improve your odds of generating quality leads by giving prospects less choices, not more.  Here’s why:

Less Choice Means Better Search Engine Optimization - There are millions of websites competing for your customer’s attention.  If you focus with your 80/20 compass on providing prospects with only a few key solutions, the search engines will love you because:

1. Your content will have dense,  focused and concentrated keywords making it more relevant to search engines.  The more choices you give, the more watered down your relevance can become.
   
2. Other websites are more likely to link to specific content rather than general.  Offering less choice means you can get more specific and detailed with your content.  The more links from other websites you get - the more the search engines reward you with higher ranking.
   
3. Your long tail starts to wag.  The long tail refers to the millions of searches that are looking for obscure or non-general search phrases.  So instead of a general search for "truck" a longtail search would be "1984, blue truck with 20 inch tires"  So by focusing on building your content on fewer choices you are in a better position to benefit from the long tail.  The long tail also has high conversion rates because the searches are so specific and there is less competition for the terms.

Less Choice Makes A More Effective Website - The more options you add to your website the more confusing it becomes to the visitor.  Where should they click, what does this link mean, I can’t read this, it’s too small, am I in the right place?  These are all variables that play out every time a visitor lands on your webpage.

The solution.  Kill the confusion.  Reduce the choices.  Then reduce them again.  You’ll be surprised at how your web traffic and sales will increase.

Customers Want Less Choice  - In his book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz makes a compelling case that giving a prospect too many choices is the surest way to send them packing.  Why?  This book review from Publishers Weekly captures the essence:

“Schwartz, drawing extensively on his own work in the social sciences, shows that a bewildering array of choices floods our exhausted brains, ultimately restricting instead of freeing us. We normally assume in America that more options (’easy fit’ or ‘relaxed fit’?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as to erode our psychological well-being.”

Bottom line - too much choice creates stress.  So perhaps the question is - how much stress is your website causing your visitors, customers, employees?  Should you put your website on a stress reduction program?  Cutting down the number of choices you offer is a good place to start…

By: Curt Conrad
President, BrightCite Inc.

If the "Web 2.0" reference hasn’t come across your radar screen yet you should familiarize yourself with it pronto.  I’d like to offer my assistance…  (Warning: this post is link heavy and can take you off on interesting tangents that may offer creative breakthroughs for your business.  Travel off this page at your own risk)

Web 2.0 is really a meme (Meme is another concept you should know).  According to Wikipedia (itself an example of a Web 2.0 application)  Web 2.0 can be defined as:

"…A supposed second generation of Internet-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users."

I add to the above definition something especially relevant to small businesses:

Here are 5 principles of the Web 2.0 phenomenon as articulated by O’Reilly with my definition for the small buisness:

1. The Web As Platform - The Internet itself is the basis for software application.  This turns the tables on cost.   Free "Open Source" models flourish in the naturally collaborative Web 2.0 environment.

2. Harnessing Collective Intelligence - Ask one person to help you solve a problem, they may or may not have the answer.  Ask 1,000 people to solve a problem and chances are at least one person has faced that exact problem before and has a detailed explanation of how to solve it.  Web 2.0 enables this type of instant, low cost access to the wisdom of crowds.  This dynamic creates a network effect.  As more people join a network its value increases exponentially but, the hard cost to plug into it remains the same or even decreases.  This is a major advantage to the small business.  Once access to filtered and indexed information was cost prohibitive, not anymore.
   

3. Data is the Next Intel Inside - Web 2.0 is about capturing, organizing, combining and mining data to create new value for company and customer.  This can be seen in the development of widgets, mash-ups, start-pages and dashboards that enable you to see micro and macro relationships instantly.   These data collections reveal emerging patterns by tracking behavior.  Web 2.0 makes it easier to understand what your customer wants.  Instead of contacting them (Which costs time and money) you simply watch how they behave on your website as captured by what they click on or download.  With Web 2.0 each action has a compounding data reaction.  How your business model uses, transfers and transacts on this data will determine your future success.
   

4. End of the Software Release Cycle - Web 2.0 "software" evolves and releases in semi-real-time.  It’s web based agility and distribution allows instant upgrade and incremental feature releases.  Your small business gets better functionality and systems integration.  Plus, you get it far faster and at much less cost when compared to software following 1.0 release cycles.  It’s amazing how cost efficient you get when you eliminate shrink wrap disk distribution and provide web based ASP software access rather than 1.0 computer based software installation on individual machines.
   

5. Lightweight Programming Models - Open source code lets programmers be legally free to combine existing code from multiple programs in useful combinations.   And an affinity for syndication have created programming methods that provide innovation by default not on purpose.  When you use web 2.0 applications you have the ability to profit, customize and synthesize from the future value inherent in the philosophy behind the application’s very programming. On other words, these programmers are inviting and encouraging users to improve what they have built.  In this environment, everyone wins.
   

6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device - No longer are you separated by or limited to an individual desktop or laptop or cell phone or  T.V. or  iPod or stereo or car or radio.  Web 2.0 has the ability to cross platform, to be accessible when and where you need it.  This translates into great reduction of overhead for the small business.  With Web 2.0 you no longer are held hostage by compatibility, size, device, or location.
   

7. Rich User Experiences - Ajax, Java Script, standards based CSS and XHTML all enable a web browser to behave with the continuity and fluidity of a desktop program.  Instead of waiting for pages to load, Web 2.0 applications allow the user instant gratification and smooth interaction that the Web 1.0 browser experience simply couldn’t provide.  No longer is quality of user experience and program performance exclusively reliant on a powerful computer or it’s processing speed.  Small businesses who have benefited from falling hardware costs can now reap even greater cost reduction benefits. The chains to desktop software efficiency are broken by the increasing richness of the Web 2.0 experience.

So let’s tie this all together.  A great way to understand Web 2.0 is to compare it to Web 1.0 - which most small business owners are familiar. 

I find an example again supplied by Tim O’Reilly.    In a blog post (a Blog is another example of a web 2.0 application) entitled "What is Web 2.0?" he offers a clear evolution from web 1.0 to 2.0.  As you review it ask yourself how Web 2.0 can enhance your business today…  Ask yourself why Google, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Linked-In and dozens of other Web 2.0 companies are changing the way we meet, interact and transact…  Ask yourself how Wiki’s, RSS, Open Source software, Blogs, Tags and social software can be applied in your business.  Your opportunity awaits…

"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies."

Northeastern University published a white paper reporting on their "Blogging Success Study".  The paper distills their findings into 5 underlying factors of successful business web logs. 

The report highlights best practices of the following successful corporate business blogs.  These are great sites to visit if you’re thinking about publishing a blog to support your business.

• SuccessFactors
• Stonyfield Farms
• Stone Creek Coffee
• Jeremy Pepper
• MSInteractive
• Mississippi Hospital Association
• Microsoft - Heather Hamilton
• Masi Bicycles
• Marqui
• Indium Corporation
• Gourmet Station
• Emerson Process Management
• Conference Calls Unlimited
• BzzAgent
• Aliza Sherman Risdahl
• Adweek
• Adobe
• Daily Eats
• Landfair Furniture

The study goes on to report the 5 success factors.  Here’s the background and gist:

Interview results were transcribed and summarized in twenty separate case studies.  Each was then studied and analyzed with three questions in mind:

•  How does the set up of a blog contribute to a blog’s success?
•  What is it about how you blog that makes the blog a success?
•  What is it about the content on a blog that makes the blog a success? 

After careful review, the research team identified five factors for success.  The majority of the twenty participant bloggers pointed to these factors as important to the success of their blog.  We focus in on these factors in Section Three.

The five factors identified by the participants were:

1. Culture
2. Transparency
3. Time
4. Dialogue
5. Entertaining Writing Style and Personalization

You can download the PDF White Paper of the Blogging Success Study here.