Google Chrome Web Store
As a dedicated web geek, I have been a huge fan of the Google Chrome browser since the earliest beta release, and I consider it the only browser for surfing, while all the others are just there for testing new websites for things like stylesheets.
If you use Google Chrome, perhaps you have recently noticed something different when you opened a new tab. If you use the default settings for opening a new tab, you will be greeted with Google Chrome Web Store and a couple of suggested apps. Although it is not new (about a year old), the presentation of Google Chrome Web Store in the default new tab is new to Google Chrome 9.
I recall hearing many complaints about the lack of applications for Google Chrome when it first launched. A lot has changed since that time, and today there are roughly a squillion add-ons to make the browsing experience more “Firefox-like”. The updates in the newly released version 9 show that Google is really at the top of their game.
Here is a screenshot of how Google Chrome Web Store was presented to me, just a moment ago (click for larger view). Google Chrome Web Store in Google Chrome New Tab
Since I normally have nice big thumbnail images with links to my most used websites, this really reached out and grabbed my attention. I suspect that I am not the only one, and this could create a huge surge for developers.
Will Google Chrome Web Store Be a Hit?
Google Chrome usage is constantly on the rise, and many of the available add-ons for the browser are quite helpful. If I was trying to promote a web application, I would certainly not overlook the Google Chrome Web Store for another minute!
Google PageRank? Seriously, just get out your checkbook right now and write me a blank check. Don’t worry, I will go ahead and fill in the dollar amount. You just be sure to sign it.
I was thrown back into yesteryear by a blog article I read at Search Engine Journal that discussed Google PageRank. No, it was not something from deep in the bowels of their 2003 archives, but rather a real life demonstration of sad linkbait published only yesterday. I don’t need a pissing match with these guys, but it was sad to see a long-dead topic like PageRank being exhumed for public consumption.
It reminded me about who I write for, and why. I write for you, and I try to make useful facts and good ideas spring to life with a touch of entertainment value. Once in a while I will throw in my Murnahan Cheez Whiz style to keep you on your toes and make you say “what?!”
My objectives include reducing the abundance of blatant SEO lies and myths that search engine optimizers promote. Sure, I may not be able to fix the whole world, but I can do my part to blow the “bullshit whistle” on bad SEO information.
Since I want you to subscribe to my blog and come back, I try to overlook topics that will be genuinely useless and guide you wrong. You know, topics to scare you into putting crap in your brain like Google PageRank changes.
The article I am talking about brought acid to the top of my throat and reminded me just how easy it could be to scam people out of a blank check. It touched on just how “unknown” this SEO business I am in really is, and it made me feel like one hell of a nice guy for telling things straight.
OMG, are people seriously still writing about PageRank? Maybe we can throw some meta tags into the conversation. While we are at it, I want to break out my old Farrah Fawcett poster and leave my mom a “surprise” under the bed, too.
Agreed, very old news. It is funny to me that somebody recently mentioned the PageRank of my blog and my first thought was as nostalgic as my Atari 2600.
I have not even looked at the “Green Fairy” of PageRank in half a decade. If you are doing the things you should be doing, people will love your stuff enough to link to it. If it is relevant content for a given search, on a reasonably decent website, and other people crave it, the site will rank well. Isn’t that a whole lot easier than waiting for Google to give you a number?
The remembrance of Google PageRank brought to mind the different qualities of search engine optimizers that I enjoy just enough to squash them to pieces and bury them in a shallow grave.
It is easy to understand how people could get confused about SEO. It is an industry that begs for naivety, ignorance, greed, and dishonesty. Sadly, these things are in great abundance among website owners and want-to-be SEO providers, alike.
Lay Down Your Google PageRank Gun and Listen!
Don’t shoot the messenger, but if you are looking at measurements like Google PageRank as an indicator of progress, your efforts are a hot mess. Save yourself some grief. A far better answer is to create something useful, creative, interesting, and relevant to people. These are the things which compel people like crack cocaine. These are the things which cause people to reference you and link to your website content. These are the things which make a difference, and not some misunderstood 1-10 measure that Google itself tells you to ignore.
I do not even understand why there is still a Google PageRank measurement, because Google has made it damn clear for many years that the most important thing is to give people what they want. If you concern yourself a fraction as much about what you are delivering to people as you concern yourself with Google, you will very likely rank a whole lot better. Plus, your PageRank will go up, too!
Note: I am not one of those people who only preach the gospel of “Content is King” and that writing a bunch of stuff on a blog will make something rank well. There are a lot of things which go into good SEO. Google PageRank is not in my list of SEO lessons, and I don’t think it was anywhere in my SEO blog archive, either … until now.
OK, doubters, now that you have heard me out, go ahead and fire your PageRank guns and tell me how wrong I am in the comments section below.
The Internet has changed. Wait, scratch that … the world has changed, and the people of the world are fully engrossed in “The Information Age”. Maybe it is even beyond that, and perhaps we can now effectively call this “The Static Age” because of the massive level of static we must sort through to hear or be heard. Right now, today, there are likely 42 squillion people writing about your industry on a daily basis, and unless you are the reincarnation of Elvis Presley, you will have a hard time capturing their interest.
It is time to take a closer look at an important metric of your website traffic. Who is coming to visit, and will they return? Did you do something that knocked their socks off? Did you have something to say that totally blew them away enough to subscribe and come back? Allow me to explain why this matters, and what you can do about it.
Good Bloggers Know and Care About Readership Churn
The number of bloggers in 2010 has shot the moon. If you don’t believe me, that is fine. I should not need to prove this with numbers, because you surely already know it. You probably already saw another blog (or three) in the last 1 minute and 22 seconds. The blast of information is fast, furious, and growing like a flu pandemic. Some of it is great information, but most of it will interest you as much as a knitting class interests a race car driver.
Much of the massive blast of information simply does not apply to your life. Even if it is reliably useful information, I think we can agree that a lot of what we see on the Internet is filed away in the “time wasted” category and we will not be going back to read more.
So what about you? Will you find yourself filed away in the bottom of your readers’ Internet history? If you want to avoid this, you must get a couple things straight right now. In my short list, I will include that you must be useful, pay attention to your readers, give them a great reason to come back, and do not disappoint them when and if they do.
There is Still Hope for Bloggers!
I have written about good reasons to blog. The reasons I have listed have been implemented and trusted by many readers. I write things to help people, and I do not take them for granted. Even with all my efforts to be useful, it would be astonishingly simple for people to forget where they got that useful idea (whatever the idea). I know this, because I forgot where I have found some great ideas, too. I am telling you … there is a massive wave of information, and even the best of us cannot keep it all filed away perfectly. So it is extremely important to help people remember you. If you are in business, it is important to help people remember why to come back to you when they want more, or they know somebody who does. How can you do that?
If you are blogging to advertise your goods or services, you will have a hard time getting people to pay attention. Something far more important is to give them something they care about. Give them something useful. Since you cannot do something amazing every day (nobody can), you should give them a picture of other things you write about. Give them an archive. If they think that you may be just a little bit interesting, let them see if there is more where that came from. I will blog about how to create various kinds of blog archives soon, but for now, just be aware of the idea and that it can help others see more value in what you provide.
If They Want More, Make it Easy and Non-Threatening
The next thing to do is be sure that if people see a value in what you provide that they can subscribe to receive more of it. You do not have to beat them over the head with it, but you cannot expect them to go out of their way to give you their attention, either. It is not a promise that you will be amazing. It is not a promise that they will ever do business with you, either. It simply means that they will have more opportunity to see what you are about, and if they eventually need what you offer or know somebody who does, they will remember you. Timing is a big issue in business, and most of the time, people do not need or want what you sell at the moment they discover you. Things can change, and if they are at least aware of you, you will have a lot stronger chance of getting the call when they need you.
Give them an easy way to subscribe. Google’s FeedBurner is easy and non-threatening because people will never need to worry about you spamming them. If they subscribe by email, it is safe because they are not giving it to you. I never worry about subscribing to a FeedBurner feed, because I know my email is not going anywhere but Google, and Google already has my email. They don’t spam me. As for RSS subscribers, like email, they choose whether to subscribe and they will not need to worry about you having their email address, and the only way you can really “spam” them is by putting it on your blog for the world to see.
It is this easy to ask somebody to subscribe. Allow me to lead by example.
… and it is this easy to show them your past performance so they know what to expect:
To summarize this, it is important to remember the value of repetition in marketing, and that if you want people to receive your message over and over again, you need to do something useful that benefits them. You have to give them a great reason to receive your repetition. Then, you must let them know that you want to be in their list of considerations when it is the right time for them.
No, this is not a precise tutorial on how to get things just right. It is a message on how to think about your marketplace and why people will want to hear from you again. Just like any business endeavor, when you reach the same people again and again, it is a whole lot easier than trying to continually find new people. This is true whether you are giving something away for free, or offering something for sale.
Now I ask that if you have an interest in what I said here that you subscribe to receive more, because I truly do not want to have to replace you.
Who is Your Google Target?Have you ever taken a moment to consider what people are really looking for when they come to your website? Of course you have, right? Maybe you have tried some keyword research tools and done your best to discover as many lateral keywords as you can possibly optimize. What may be surprising is how many customers you are missing, and the relatively simple reasons why. I want to give you some Google website marketing ideas for how to improve your website traffic, and optimize the traffic you already have.
Let’s take a look at two types of website traffic that come from a Google search. I will call them “first-search” and “second-search” website traffic. Both are important, but most companies are too focused on one to even recognize the other. Their loss may be your gain!
Website Visitors Google What They Want!
I see a lot of companies scramble to be found in a Google search for what they sell, without enough consideration for the real reasons people are searching. I wish I had a dollar for every time somebody told me “we are in Google” and they think that is what matters. They may even be well ranked in Google for their product or service, and still be missing a huge number of potential sales. This often happens because much of their website traffic is from second-search users (I will explain in a moment) and competitors searching to check out the competition. I don’t know about you, but in a lot of industries, the competition is not the best target customer. Now, that is not true for every industry, because other SEO and Internet marketers are good clients for me (SEOs see “How To Market SEO and Vertical Internet Marketing“). I actually want to be a great resource to my “competition”, but for most people wanting to improve website traffic, the competition is not their best target.
Improve Website Traffic Through First Search Not Second Search
What is this “first search” and “second search” thing that I am writing about? An important Internet marketing factor that a lot of people do not measure or understand is that many people who search for something perform multiple types of searches. I will just give two main categories to explain this. I will call them “first-search” and “second-search”.
First-Search Website Traffic: First-search traffic comes when people search for what they want. If their toe hurts, they may search for “big blister on toe” as a first search. It helps them get direction. They want to know what to do with that big blister, and maybe what caused it. They are researching. They are not quite sure yet just what they want or need, but they are trying to find their way. Once they know their way and learn the industry-popular terminology and can refine a search, then they will use a second-search approach to filter through the available solutions.
Second-Search Website Traffic: If you are a podiatrist (foot doctor), you may feel that it is just great that they can find you when they search for a podiatrist, but what if you caught them in the first search? Wouldn’t it be more likely that if they found you in the first-search category that they will see you as a greater authority when they discover you again in the second-search? Then, once they figure out they need a podiatrist you will be a more likely choice to help them. Doesn’t this seem like a great idea to be an authority in both searches? Of course that makes sense, but do you think you are accomplishing the task? For most people, the answer is no. This includes your competitors.
Increased website traffic and better Google rankings are not the only things that matter. I could go into the topics of search conversion (getting more people to click on your website once they find you in Google listings) and website conversion (getting more people to take action once they are on your website). Those are both great topics for other articles, but what I want you to think about here is how to improve website traffic by answering people’s problems. In order to solve their problem, you will have to look at the core of your business. What do you do? I don’t mean looking at it as “practicing podiatry” but rather “we help people with sore toes who want something to help toe pain.”
As you notice the heading of this page states, “Google Website Marketing: How to Improve Website Traffic” and that is what I am here to tell you. “Google website marketing” is my example of first-search traffic, and it reaches my equivalent of a person with a sore toe. Once they learn more about my industry-specific terminology, they refine their search to compare solutions. For example, “reasons to blog” or “compare SEO” may be second-search considerations, because now they have a better feel for what they need.
Improve Website Traffic by Knowing Your Return Visitors
There is often a huge disparity between what a company hopes people will search for and what actually creates more business. I find that for many companies, even when they know what people search for, they often only mimic the competition by targeting the second-search users. They know that these second-search users become customers, but often ignore whether they are actually returning visitors who found them previously. Any business should target people who search for their product … the actual things that they sell. It just makes sense. What is too commonly missed is the website visitors who are actually returning first-search users, or otherwise knowing where they have been before they came to you. They may have been highly influenced long before the search term that you recognize as important. Imagine the value in knowing what they looked for the first time and honing in on those search terms. All of this is measurable, but many people just overlook the importance.
If you analyze your web server logs, your Google analytics, or other website analytics tool to find what people search for when they find your website for the first time and match it with the returning traffic, it may surprise you. Sometimes a better target is to reach people searching for the solution to a problem. Then, if you do not make them a customer in the first-search, you can be there for the second-search when they want to compare you to the competition. Analyzing your website traffic logs and giving close attention to returning website visitors can tell you a lot about what drives people to buy from you. If you are not paying attention and taking appropriate actions, you will miss a whole lot of customers.
A Real-Life First-Search and Second-Search Example
Many people find my websites for things like “compare SEO“, “lateral keywords“, “h1 tags“, and “Google SEO Starter Guide“. I rank nicely in searches for the things I do. However, I often find that some of my best clients came from first searches that were less industry-oriented, but then returned to my website as a result of a much more sophisticated search that shows they have done their homework. Reaching these readers in the first-search phase and repeatedly being there through their learning process is invaluable to me. Monitoring for these trends is important.
Maybe you rank nicely for your industry terms, too, but it is sometimes not the things that you do or sell that your best buyers will initially find you for in a Google search. If you improve your first-search exposure, you may find it a lot easier to reach the second-search buyers.
Where Google Meets BaseballDid you know that Google will help you to have better results in their search engine? Google provides useful advice on how to improve a website’s search engine ranking, and they did it with Brandon’s Baseball Cards. If you have never heard about Brandon or the example Google made with his baseball cards, I would not be surprised. There is a lot of information on the Internet, and it can be hard to take it all in. The information Google provides to explain search engine optimization is worth the time it will take to read and take notes. This is especially true if you are going to try do-it-yourself search engine optimization (DIY SEO) for the first time.
Google Wants to Index Your Site
Google wants to include your website in their index, and for good reason. When you can find anything and everything you ever want to know at Google.com, it is good for their company. This is how Google maintains its ranking as the number one search engine. Being the perfect go-to source for information is what drives Google’s AdWords advertising sales up, and keeps their market share strong. The biggest challenges website owners face mirror the challenges Google faces, and are as follows:
Billions of Competing Web Pages
Providing High-Quality Information
Google works very hard to provide the best results when users search the Internet. If your website is not among the top results, it is not because Google is out to kill your business, but mostly that somebody else had more relevant and easier to index information.
Google Will Help You With SEO
The efforts Google has made to help people better understand their search engine is not a secret. Any decent search engine optimizer (SEO) is aware of Google Webmaster Tools and Google’s Search Engine Optimizer Starter Guide. Most SEO will be happy to share the information with you just as I am here. A good SEO will be glad to know their clients have read the information so they understand the job we do. An informed client will understand the value of SEO work, and is less likely to fall asleep when we talk.
If you put this information to good use, and you do not try to cheat Google’s well-formed system, your Google ranking will improve and your website will receive more traffic. Better yet, it will receive more relevant traffic because people will be finding your site based on exactly what they search for. It will cost you nothing but your time and attention, but what it can return is extremely beneficial to your business. Now that I put it this way, wouldn’t it really seem crazy to neglect it? Really, this is free exposure to your business using the number one way that people find businesses to buy from. Doesn’t it seem like that is worthwhile? I believe your answer is yes, but you may be wondering what this has to do with Brandon’s Baseball Cards, so I will get to that.
Brandon’s Baseball Cards and Search Engine Optimization
If you do not already know what Brandon’s Baseball Cards has to do with SEO, it is only because you did not read “Google’s Search Engine Optimizer Starter Guide” yet. It is only 22 pages in length and I really hope you will take some time to read it. Even if you are a professional SEO, the information contained in the document may just be what your next client needs to help them understand how you can help them.
Since I know some of you will never take my advice and read the SEO starter guide, I will let the cat out of the bag. Brandon’s Baseball Cards is the product Google used in its examples. Go ahead and see what is at brandonsbaseballcards.com. If you did not guess, it goes to Google.com.
What Google Didn’t Mention
The information Google provides about SEO is very important, but it is not everything. There is not a single element that will place your link at the top of every search results page. If there was an easy fix, everybody would be doing it. Effective SEO requires marketing talent, and it is a mix of both art and science. If I could condense all that you need to know into a list of SEO lessons and make it simple, I would do that. As it is, there are still a lot of important tasks that a professional SEO performs. Two search engine optimizers will never achieve the exact same results, and implementation of SEO skills will vary. There is only one position at the top, and I hope to see you there. If you need help with that, ring me any time at *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*).
Just one more thing: Can you name the baseball player pictured above? Add your guess in the comments!
