/Slashtag the web and make your searches meaningful with a “/“

There is a new Search Engine in town and we have been playing with it for a while. It is liberating and so open about their data and tools for looking at how your site is ranked it will blow you away! In fact you can have a look at how we are ranked here: integrati marketing /rank this is way too cool for school and blows away the protective barriers other search engines use like Google Webmaster and Bing Webmaster Central fro instance.

The great thing about the web is all the data right?!

Well since I started using the web in 1995 (yeah that was a while ago now and yes I was on a browser called mosaic!) the web has exploded content wise with billions of pages.

So how do you make all that content relevant again?

You filter, slice and dice it with Blekko and their Slashtags!

Blekko is Social Search

Even better the way you can use Blekko is very similar to using Social Media and you can share slashtags and your slashtag searches with other like-minded searching peoples on the web!

Awesome.

OK… so I don’t write a novel about how it all works and because video is way cooler and quicker let’s have the crew at Blekko explain how it all work on their video here for you.

blekko: how to slash the web from blekko on Vimeo.

Thank you Blekko!

After all your hard work building your site have you taken your slice of Search Engine traffic the site deserves?

The web cliché “Build it and they will come” is now no longer true, there are trillions of pages of content on the Internet today. Being found now, and staying ‘found’ is key and will be key to any of your online marketing activities.

If you are starting out in business and have a presence ‘On and Offline’ with a physical store or an e-commerce website then being found is very much like being found on a map with your street address. The only thing is that the online address does not conform to the rules of the real world.

When you build your site you’re looking to ‘woo’ traffic from 3 key sources, they are, Direct Traffic, Referring Sites and Search Engines Traffic. Direct Traffic is exactly what it says on the tin, a visitor has typed in your website name (URL) and gone straight to a page on your site. Whereas a Referring Site(s) is a site which has your link and a user has clicked on the link on their site to get to yours. While lastly there is Search Engine Traffic, which in this example is un-paid and is commonly known as Natural Search. In other words a user typed a search request with a keyword(s) and a list of results came up of which you were one (This is the term “Impressions” how many times you’re listed on a viewed search results page). And the ‘user’ looking at Search Engine Results Page (SERP) then clicked on your website link and ‘Clicked Through’ to your site.

So, whilst you can promote your own Direct Traffic to your site through off and online marketing and networking Referring Sites can be a little harder to build as you need to link with relevant sites that have great reputations. But the most important in regards to relevant traffic with volume is the last one Search Engines Traffic. So how do you optimise your site for Search engine traffic… well it is yet another acronym, Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. There is a lot we can do when we talk about SEO but I want you to think of  these rules and play by them:

1.    Good content first – think about the reader
2.    Use strong meaningful keywords that assist your copy and are relevant
3.    Be ethical, do not fall into the trap of buying a service that ‘says’ can make you number one in Google, they can not
4.    Think Incremental, small changes overtime which help you improve your rankings

Ok all good stuff, these SEO rules are simple but highly effective. There is plenty more but we can talk about that another time. Integrati Marketing work by these rules for ourselves and our customers. We never engage in any Black Hat SEO practices at all.

So, where to start, well this is where our friends at WooRank.com come in. The team at WooRank have spent considerable time and effort building an online benchmarking tool that will help you measure your sites SEO relative to the other sites which have been benchmarked on WooRank.com. Now we just want to be clear here, the ranking number is helpful but it is not a number to live or die by. It is an indication of how well your site is presenting to Search Engines and for visitors with their web browsers or your sites usability. Such as; page load times which Google I believe in the next year may start to include in the index tool set for web site ranking. That said we also believe WooRank to be the most accurate on the web today for FREE.

So how does it work?

Simple you head over to WooRank.com and add in your sites URL or canonical name which for us is integrati.com.au and then hit “Generate Report”.  Then the magic starts, your site will be Woo Ranked and you will be able to work through the results and even get an email of the results in pdf. sent to your inbox.

The great thing about WooRank is you can then work through your site over time and ‘tweak’ areas to see how these changes may improve your SEO results. The thing is you do not have to take all the advice from the WooRank report but it has just given you a FREE benchmark of your site relative to all the other sites ranked in WooRank. This simple act of benchmarking now means you can work to either maintain or improve your ‘Woo’. And by improving your Woo you will in effect by increasing (hopefully) the ‘find-ability’ of your website by search engines and improving your sites user experience for your visitors.

Even better the SEO Guru’s at WooRank.com have put together a guide for each result and links so you can learn more about changes you may want to make to your site.

They also have a great page on 7 key areas of SEO with online marketing which I have reproduced here, so thank you to Boris and the team at WooRank for this!

From WooRank:

Now web professionals have an objective yardstick to know what Google looks for when crawling their websites: WooRank.

Online marketing The Web doesn’t guarantee visibility. You have to go after it and claim your position by optimising coding and offering solid content. WooRank can help you do that. The seven steps below reflect the main methods to achieve great search positions by understanding how search engines really work.

1. Phrases and Keyword

People search the Web using particular words and phrases they hope will lead them to the sites they want. To be sure they find your site, select words and phrases that are simultaneously popular enough to use, but unique enough to your business to help your target customer find you. A popular phrase that brings up millions of pages will be useless, as will a phrase that might find only your business, but that no one knows or would ever think of when searching.

2. Tempting the Googlebot

All search engines use armies of small programs called “bots” that search the Web, read pages, analyse contents and place their findings in various indexes that supply results to searchers. Your job is to provide the bots with a site-map and to use files, such as robots.txt, to limit where they search your site. Picking the right hosting service for a new site is also important, as is also understanding the crucial role that bandwidth plays in site performance. Run WooRank to get more insights.

3. Getting Your Pages Right

Writing the appropriate keywords and phrases for your site is decisive. Remember Google parses websites differently and presents them with less priority if their pages are very similar to many others. A professional copywriter may be useful to ensure you’re making the best use of every element detailed by WooRank. The challenge is that your pages must be accessible to search engine bots while remaining user-friendly and readable.

4. Linking So that It Counts

Google does not publish its exact algorithm for ranking websites, but it does pay attention to the sites that link to and refer to your site. The route to a good Google ranking is to get a high quantity and quality of links to your pages from important, relevant and reliable sources. Be careful not to run afoul of Google’s spam filters. Don’t use hidden text, pay for inbound links or participate in backlink networks. Make sure you have not inadvertently created suspicious-looking pages or traffic. WooRank will check it for you.

5. Google’s Paid Ads

Keep in mind that a lot of the cost of Web advertising is wasted. If you decide to pursue it, be sure the material is written correctly. To put paid ads in perspective, see them as a useful adjunct to a solid campaign for good organic search-result rankings. Be careful which words you purchase and how much you pay. Don’t get stuck in a situation where you pay for hundreds of thousands of meaningless clicks. Be cautious when you build the landing page, the one that searchers will see first when they click on your ad. Make sure it helps your customers easily access whatever you offered them in the ad.

6. The Rising Power of Maps

Increasingly, search engines emphasize maps and geography-based searches. To boost your website visibility think about such relevant features as declared language and geographic optimization. As many of the WooRank tips suggest use coding standards so that customers from around the globe can find you, read your text in their own languages and learn where your stores are. Don’t forget to target local customers since people are drawn more strongly to Web ads from nearby businesses than to those from distant businesses or those of indeterminate location.

7. Using Google Analytics

Track and analyse the traffic your site generates. Google provides excellent tools to understand how your customers work with your site. You can activate Google Analytics by adding a bit of code to each page you want tracked. Google also supplies Webmaster Tools that help you monitor your search rankings. Like WooRank these tool sets are evolving and continue to be enhanced. When you really know how people use your site, you can fine-tune your organic and paid advertising, as well as revising your site to become more attractive and effective in converting Web searchers into customers.
So, now you are armed with two really great tools you have one of the best SEO tools available online at WooRank.com for FREE and you have this post and the team at WooRank.com  added guide to understanding what is important with the science and art of SEO. In that great copy is art, great keywords and SEO optimisation is the science.

Just so you know, yes we use WooRank, of course, but we had to share this with you!

We love to share and we love WooRank, we know you will to so go on get out there grab your ranking from WooRank and start Wooing the best Search Engines to get your business building the right way online for 2010!

Thank you to the team at WooRank.com and in particular to Boris!

Check out WooRank.com and get your Woo on!

And just for fun, I got ‘Rick-Rolled‘ by WooRank you can too, just test Woorank.com on their site – good one Boris!

*Update* We have received today the new feature to display your Woo on your site with this widget from WooRank, you can get yours here:

Our Woorank today is:

Until next time, happy marketing from the Integrati Marketing team.