Cameron Gibbs

One of the first things I learned about building a web site was the difference between static sites and dynamic sites. Though I’m not a programmer, I’ll try to do my best to explain the difference between the two and why static pages are crucial to SEO…

Static pages are pages that you create that don’t include any code that will make the content of the page change. For example, your standard old HTML web page is a static page. A dynamic page, on the other hand, is database driven. Dynamic pages are pages that are built by pieces pulled from different tables in a database that come together to form a page; they are built on-the-fly and they don’t really exist as pages within the web sites directory. They use more advanced code such ASP or PHP. Webcrawlers like the googlebot, can’t/don’t crawl pages that don’t exist.

One of the other benefits to a static web site is the url. The url for a static page uses the file name of the web page which you determine. This will allow you to put keywords for the page in the url. Dynamic pages, conversely, contain long query strings that don’t really describe the page. As an example, here is a page that uses a static, seo-friendly url, and here is a page that uses a dynamic url.

To prove that the url is a factor in determining the web pages’ relevancy, do a search for extension cable in google and notice that google bolds the keywords in the url of each of the sites listed.

If you have a dynamic site and none of your pages are getting indexed, switch to static pages or you’ll be fighting an uphill battle just to get your pages indexed, let alone ranking well in the search engines.

There are a number of things to keep in mind when building inbound links to your site. The most important is the anchor text. On a side note, I have something to confess… for years, I never knew what the “a” stood for when I was creating a link by typing a href=blah, blah, blah. Once I learned about anchor text for SEO, it suddenly occurred to me that that’s what that lonely a stands for. Anyway, back to SEO…

So, if you sell widgets, and you want to optimize your site so that it comes up first in Google when someone is searching for a widget, you use widget as the anchor text for those inbound links.

Another significant aspect that the googlebot and other webcrawlers record and consider is the location of the link on the page. The best placement is in the primary content of the page or in the upper sections or left side. Text-Link-Ads.com is a site that brokers link renting and they have a calculator that tells you which locations on the page are considered the most valuable, a good indication of where you want your links to be.

It is also important to point a significant number of inbound links to your homepage for a couple of reasons. First, your homepage likely links to other pages on your site so it will pass linkjuice on to them. Also, though I’m not sure I totally believe this one, Google may discount a site that has serious linkage to a few subpages but little linkage to the homepage.

Remember to try to get links from quality sites. Google makes it very easy to know which sites are quality sites… they have a good PageRank. You can see a sites PageRank by downloading and installing the Google toolbar.

So, when building links, remember anchor text, the location of the inbound link on the page, and links from quality pages are all key to SEO.

Every SEO will agree that the most important factor in SEO is backlinks, both quality and quantity — it’s no secret.

There are a number of ways to get other sites to link to you… here’s a few: reciprocal links (you link to someone and they link to you), renting links through a broker or directly from another site, buying permanent links, sponsoring or advertising on sites (pretty much the same as renting), etc. You can also comment on others blogs and link back to your site or write in online article directories, such as ezine articles, and include a link to your site. But the cheapest and the best way to build links is by the sweat of your brow — developing a quality, valuable site that other sites will link to.

You can see how many sites are linking to you by typing the following in the google search bar link:yourdomainname.com. In yahoo, type linkdomain:yourdomainname.com. You’ll notice that Google and Yahoo will also list pages on your site that link to the homepage… this is normal.

So, when optimizing your site for search engines, the number one thing you can do is build links, lots and lots of links! There are a number of other things to consider when you’re building links… but I’ll leave that for tomorrow. It’s past my bedtime right now.

Next week, I will share 5 tips (one tip each day) on search engine optimization. This is something I plan to do over the next several weeks. I plan to share tips on the most common, effective forms of internet marketing, specifcally, pay-per-click advertising, comparison shopping engines, affiliate marketing, email, merchandising, and maybe a little on promotions, blogs, and banners (CPM).

The tips will certainly not be comprehensive and will be a mix of beginner’s, intermediate, and advanced.

On a totally unrelated note, I posted this entry as I watched the ending of the Dallas - Seattle WILD card playoff game. Poor Tony Romo… he will never hear the end of it… you could certainly feel his pain as he walked off the field with his head hanging low. Interestingly, the commentators never recognized what #27 of the Seahawks did… if it weren’t for his shoestring tackle from behind, Romo would have had six points or a first down, at the least.

A while back, Google Adwords added a setting to campaigns called “delivery method”. The setting includes two options: 1) Standard: shows ads evenly over time and 2) Accelerated: shows ads as quickly as possible. Surprisingly, Google sets the standard option as the default. Common sense would be to make the accelerated option the default. Read on…

If every $10 in ad spend results in $20 gain, why would anyone want to spread out a limited budget over the day? That also leads to another question… why would anyone want to limit their budget? I can’t think of a scenario in which setting a limited budget and spreading it out over the day makes sense. Anyone that can think of one, I’d love to hear it.

Those that have a very high budget that they never come close to reaching probably don’t have to worry about the delivery method, though I’d switch it just to be safe. If you aren’t hitting your budget than your ads will show all day, regardless of which option is selected.

Last week, Google announced content match bidding. Now advertisers can have a separate max CPC for content network sites.

Before this change, when content match was turned on, Google would select a keyword from each ad group in the campaign and the max CPC for that keyword (usually the same as the max CPC for the ad group) was your content match max CPC. This was rediculious as the content network sites don’t drive nearly as qualified traffic as the search network sites. Since the traffic isn’t as qualified, it is hard to justify spending as much per click in the content network as in the search network and you can’t lower your max CPC without lowering the max CPC on search — at which point you are forced to turn content match off for the entire campaign. Now, I can just lower my max CPC instead of shutting off the advertising and the traffic to my site.

Now that the minimum bid for content match is just $0.01, I can advertise where I wasn’t advertising before. Google has opened up a market that they had eliminated due to the previous high cost of content match advertising. In other words, they have eliminated the price floor and advertising willing to advertise at a lower cost can advertise on publishers’ sites that are willing to rent their space for less. My friend Preston does a good job explaining this economic principle in his blog.

Another problem I always had with the content match was that is was set at the campaign level. Sometimes I would have an ad group that had a good return while another ad group couldn’t produce any sales. Now, though the setting is still at the campaign level, I can bid as low as $0.01 on ad groups that just don’t produce sales. I have no problem spending $0.01 per click on less-qualified traffic because eventually, someone’s going to buy and that purchase will likely come before the cost per conversion is more than the margin on what I’m selling.

I am really excited about this new feature. I’ve had several sales on content match advertising but the clicks were to expensive. Now, I can get those sales at a lower cost and generate more profit.

As anyone reading this post already knows, Google recently released Google Analytics, web-analytic software that reports everything you ever needed to know about the traffic on your site. Among a million other features, Google Analytics reports conversions, where they came from, dollar-amount of purchase, etc. Very, very cool software.

While online marketers everywhere are gawking at the incredible capabilities of this web-analytic software, Yahoo!, in the meantime can’t even get their bland conversion counter to work. I recently emailed them about our sudden drop in conversions. Latter that day, they sent this email out to all of their customers:

From: Yahoo! Conversion Counter [mailto:analytics@email.yahoosearchmarketing.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 3:26 PM
To: Cameron Gibbs
Subject: Important information about your Conversion Counter data

Dear Advertiser,

We wanted to let you know that some advertisers are currently
experiencing an issue with Conversion Counter data. For these
advertisers, Conversion Counter is undercounting conversions
since September 29th, 2005. As a result, your Conversion
Counter data may not accurately reflect the actual number of
conversions you have received since September 29th. We
sincerely apologize for any difficulty you are experiencing
and want you to know that we are working to restore full
functionality to this feature.

Again, we sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and hope
to have your service restored as quickly as possible.

Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo! Search Marketing

Sorry Yahoo!. I think it’s time to drop the exclamation point.

One of the first decions every online retailer makes is which shipping courier to use: UPS or FedEx. They also have to decide which shipping methods to offer, whether to pad the shipping charge to cover fulfillment costs, whether to charge a flat rate or by zip code, and what to do for international orders. Obviously, there is no clear answer. What may work for one retailer, may not work for another. However, this article will provide information that will help retailers make these decisions.

I have been working for an online retailer for more than three years and have had my hand in shipping and operations since my beginning. I work for a software developing-turned-computer hardware retailer called Sewell Direct. We initially specialized in connectivity, but have since expanded our product line into several areas of computer hardware and accessories.

Originally, we only offered ground, 2nd-day, and overnight shipping via FedEx. When customers began requesting their orders ship to PO boxes and APO’s (military address that FedEx and UPS can’t deliver to), we looked into offering the post office as an alternative shipping method. When we discovered that priority mail was cheaper than ground rates (when under two pounds), that the post office would provide the boxes at no charge, that it takes shipments only two to three days to get to the east coast (we’re based in Provo, Utah), and that there were no surcharges, it was a no-brainer to offer it. In the beginning we used stamps.com to process the stamps but later found Dazzle which has an API, making it easier to integrate with our intranet software and streamline shipping.

Just before offering USPS shipping, we also added the FedEx Home Delivery shipping method. Home Delivery delivers in the same time frame as ground (1 to 5 business days), but it has a few advantages for customers shipping to their homes: tuesday thru saturday shipping vs monday thru friday for ground, shipping is slightly cheaper than ground shipping plus the residential surcharge, and they deliver into the night when it’s more likely that our customer will be home. However, Home Delivery comes with its disadvantages as well. FedEx will tell you that they use smaller trucks (vans) for home delivery saving you money but the real reason is because many of the time Home Delivery shippers are just contractors hired by FedEx that don’t have the FedEx box trucks (they just stick the FedEx decal on the side of their van). We’ve found that sometimes these guys don’t care how or when they deliver the package. Also, with Home Delivery you have to determine which addresses are residential and which are commercial in order to get the savings. We included a “delivery area” field on our online checkout process to help us but when customers could see that it was cheaper to have the order shipped ground, they would select ground though their address was residential. Other issues arised so we just decided to can Home Delivery and ship everything ground.

Just last week, we decided it was time to start listening to our customers again (just like we did when they wanted us to ship to PO boxes and APO’s) by seting up an appointment with the local UPS rep. In the online retail business you’ll find that some people love UPS and hate FedEx while others swear by FedEx and dispise UPS. While this usually happens because of a customer’s previous less-than-desirable experience with one of the couriers, there is an explanation for this: FedEx is king of the air and UPS is king of the ground. In the beginning, FedEx was known as the quick, pricey overnight shipper. Though UPS has always offered air shipping, when one needed something shipped quickly, FedEx was the sure way. Because UPS has been doing ground shipping so much longer, they have the advantage in that arena. We’ve also found that most businesses will provide a UPS account before a FedEx account so we have to call them to get a FedEx account (and they don’t always have one). As soon as we can free up some of our programmers’ time, we’ll be adding UPS shipping to our store.

Up to this point, we have always charged our customers based on their zip code but it would be really nice to charge a flat rate so that customers on the east coast aren’t turned away by high shipping rates. In other words, I’d rather have everyone paying the same rate than the close ones paying little and ones further away paying a lot — it just makes sense. Why would the east coast buy from us if the shipment is going to take five days and they have to pay more? That doesn’t make sense.

Offering free shipping to customers that order $100 or more of merchandise is another no-brainer. These are the customers you want to cater to. They’ll come back to you because they know you do free shipping (that’s one of the reasons why we always get our office supplies from staples though they may be cheaper elsewhere).

One of the common problems we face with FedEx is surcharges. Surcharges make it very difficult to know exactly how much to charge our customers. In an attempt to alleviate this problem, we’re changing the way our site produces the shipping rates. Now, instead of pulling the rate from a table in our database, we’re going to query FedEx/UPS’s database in order to get the rate with the surcharges. By doing this, we hope to have no more surprises when the invoice comes. Because of all the unknown surcharges we’ve had to pad our shipping maybe a little more than we’d like.

Maybe this was a little more information that you wanted but, hey, it’s not easy to fit everything I’ve learned about shipping in the last three years into one article (there’s actually lots I’ve left out… to be shared another day…. ).