Do you have a search box on your website that contains a phrase like “Enter Search” or similar? Are you using Google Analytics to track Site Search?

I’ve noticed this on several sites for a while, so thought I would post about it. In most cases where there is text already in the search box, instructing the user what to do, that text tops the list of keywords searched for on the site. Take this example:

As you can see, the search box in the top left of the page has the text “Keyword/Code Search…” inserted by default, and it disappears when you click in the box. Can you guess what the most popular keyword used to search on the site is?

Yep, “Keyword/Code Search…” by a long way! What does that tell us about this use of text in the search box on a website?

My opinion is that it isn’t sufficiently clear to the user what they are supposed to do. So they click the arrow next to the box, expecting it to take them to a full search page, but instead, it gives them the search results from the site for “Keyword/Code Search…” In this site’s case, that gives you a full list of all the products in the catalogue, but not a search page – you get the same box and text again.

My take on this is that designers need to be more instructional about what to do with/how to use the search box on a web page. Just putting “Keyword” in the box is not telling people how to use the function, but “Type what you’re looking for in this box” might just work.

It seems Google has updated its guidelines for businesses listing in Local Business Centre (which gets you on Google Maps/Local Search). You can see the new guidelines here.

The most important of the changes pertains to your Business Name: “The business name on Google Maps must be your full legal business name.” That poses problems for businesses who are “trading as”, with an often unconnected/irrelevant actual registered company name.

Why is Google hot on this? Well, keywords in the business name is a strong element of its ranking algorithm, so it’s been common for “mapspam” to use keyword-stuffed business names to rank highly.

Other changes include not being able to use a PO Box as your address, which may reduce the number of listings for businesses who don’t have a physical location in a particular town and the suggestion (but not requirement) to use the same domain name as your website for your listed email address. Hopefully most people reading this will be doing the last one as a matter of course!

RedBubble is a website where you can browse images and writing created by users, then buy the artwork/writing in a number of formats, say t-shirts, calendars, cards or posters.

Why am I writing about this? Well, my fiancee (Helen Foster Design) has just put some of her cute characters up as t-shirts, which you can see here: Helen Foster Pid T-Shirts.

I really like this model, as it allows creative producers to get their work out to a large audience without a huge cost, hopefully demonstrating demand and leading to greater things. That’s certainly what we hope will be the case for Helen. Meanwhile, consumers get access to unique products away from the mass-market high-street me-too stuff most people have, which really appeals to someone like me.

Please have a browse and leave some feedback and don’t be afraid to buy something if you like it! Helen will be adding greeting cards and other artwork later this week.

I’m pleased to announce the Online Marketing Conference 2009, organised by Business Link and being held on 3rd December at the East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham.

I will be speaking in the morning on all that’s new in the world of search engines, whilst Susan Hallam will be talking social media in the afternoon. This is all-new content that we’re both preparing for the day, so even if you’ve been on our courses before, you should attend! Not least as it’s free to small businesses in the East Midlands…

You can book online by clicking this link.

Google launched a new Labs section of Webmaster Tools today, containing two features. The first is called Fetch as Googlebot, which shows you the page that Google gets when you enter a URL from your website. Quite handy to see what Googlebot sees, particularly HTTP headers. Here’s a screenshot of the tool showing the 301 permanent redirect from the old holding page to my new homepage on the Keyword Examiner site:

The other tool reports any Malware found on your site, but I’m happy to report I can’t give you a screenshot from one of my sites for that!

I missed this when it was released a couple of weeks ago, but here it is now: Google’s “Make Your Website Work – Ten ways to convert visitors into buyers” ebook.

It’s all pretty simple stuff, but I like the format and particularly the examples of websites that tested and made improvements to their conversion rate. Go have a read!

At long last, I’m pleased to announce the launch of my Keyword Examiner tool, which I’ve been trying to get finished for the best part of a year!

The software itself has been working since January, but I haven’t had the time to put the marketing and support elements together – until now. You can see for yourself at the new website here: www.keywordexaminer.com

In a nutshell, the tool is a huge timesaver when conducting keyword research for organic SEO. It lets you search Google AdWords keyword data, just as you would with their external keyword tool, so that you can identify search phrases that people are actually using. It then runs up to three searches per keyword to see how competitive it’s likely to be if you optimised your page for that keyword, using exact match (“in quotes” searches), intitle (the exact phrase in the title tag) and allinanchor (the exact phrase in link text pointing to a page).

In this way, you can quickly tell whether a phrase is likely to be easy or difficult to optimise for, identifying the “low hanging fruit” as you go. To do this manually takes hours of cutting, pasting and searching, but Keyword Examiner automates the whole process once you’ve selected the keywords you’re interested in. You can even import WordTracker data if you want extra information (requires a WordTracker subscription).

I won’t explain further, you can read about it in detail on the website. If you think you can send some subscribers my way, there’s also a great affiliate programme that pays 40% lifetime commission.

I’d love to hear whether you like the product and from those who subscribe, what you get up to using it.

As I’m sure many of you know, I do a lot of presentations and workshops for the eBusiness Programme here in the East Midlands. Well, in November I’ll be delivering a short presentation on link building advice at a number of venues. The marketing bumpf goes like this:

Top Link Building Advice for Search Engine Optimisation

Breakfast Briefing

Without doubt, the hardest part of search engine optimisation is getting links to your site, but without them, appearing high in the list for competitive keywords is virtually impossible. Obtaining links is a time consuming, ongoing process, but it can’t be ignored if you want your SEO to succeed.

This session provides a wealth of tips on generating powerful links to your website, with the latest thinking on what works and time-saving methods to help you make the most of your link building activity. From Web 2.0 sites to social media and good old fashioned directories, you will learn where on the web the valuable links can be found.

Topics include:

• Directories that still provide value
• How to use user-generated content sites (Web 2.0) for valuable links
• Using social media to generate links
• Free tools you can use to find websites to get links from

Agenda
08:30 Registration, breakfast and networking
09:00 Presentation Starts
10:00 Q & A
10:30 Networking and close

Who Should Attend?

This session will be useful to any business looking to improve their search engine optimisation and builds on the information in our Successful and Advanced Search Engine Optimisation workshops.

Event dates:

• Lincolnshire 04 November 2009 Boston West Golf Club, Boston
• Derbyshire 05 November 2009 Ringwood Hall, Chesterfield
• Leicestershire 11 November 2009 National Space Centre, Leicester
• Nottinghamshire 17 November 2009 The Village Hotel, Nottingham
• Northamptonshire 24 November 2009 Freemasons Hall & Conference Centre, Northampton

Please note that places are limited and must be pre-booked. You can book online at the eBusiness Programme website here.

For more information or to register your place, please email events@businesslinkem.co.uk or contact the eBusiness Programme team on 0845 603 8370.

Google have been busy adding new features – you’ve probably noticed the larger font in the search box for instance.

One thing you should definitely be aware of if you have a Google Maps listing (Local Business Centre) is the new Place Pages, as detailed here. It’s worth having a read of this to understand how it could affect what people see about your business if they find it through a Google Maps search (as often comes at the top of the search results if you search for a business name and/or place). There isn’t that much different from the old Local Business Centre listing, except for the addition of adverts – so you could see your competitors listed alongside your own information! This is what’s happening with some of the ads in the page below:

If you happen to search for a “hot topic”, Google’s list of which is here, you might find the graph of exactly how hot the topic is appearing in the main search results. Details are here, but sadly it only covers the US and Japan at preset.

Finally, you may notice some additional links appearing in search result pages under some website entries. These are designed to take you directly to the section of the page that’s relevant to your search, using in-page (named) anchor tags that the page’s author has included. Why Google are doing this and what it looks like is explained here, whilst what you can do to utilise this as a webmaster is explained here.

Just in case anyone had any lingering doubts that Google uses the meta keywords tag in web pages, they categorically state they don’t here.

You might also be interested in this explanation of how Google handles duplicate content and why it’s not so much a penalty, as a simple outcome of the per-search algorithm, courtesy of Google’s Greg Grothaus.