What do I mean — or rather — what do they mean by that?

“A new study by online ad network Chitika shows that an individual Bing user is worth one and a half individual Google users in value to website owners.The value of an individual user, in this case, is determined by their likelihood to click on a website’s revenue-generating call-to-action – in Chitika’s case, a text ad embedded in the site.  Across the sample of nearly 15 million impressions used for this study, Google users clicked on ads at a rate of 1.09%, while Bing users clicked on ads 1.67% of the time…”

Now what’s that mean to us SEO types and how can we leverage that to our client’s advantage would be the first question that comes to this man’s mind….

And the answer really is quite simple and complex at the same time….here’s that data in a bar graph to show what I mean…and notice any “others” that you’ve not yet thought about too, for optimization <hint hint!!!>

At all search engines, struggle for marketshare exists. Bing (soon along with Yahoo) is now ranked at the #2 in marketshare. Bing is pretty easy to optimize for, is pretty easy to work with their new LOCAL search tools and yes, is actually (we’ve found) to rank for too.

So, think about adding Bing optimizations for your client lists….start here to get their Webmaster tools working…and here for their LOCAL listings….

And rank!

Sure I know…you think you understand exactly how things “work” when it comes to SEO and SEM…then along comes a great infographic and CLINK — your views have changed! This is exactly what happened to me when I viewed some of their great creations over at elliance and you really should take a few minutes to drop by and go thru the various ones that tickle your fancy!

Here’s a great example to begin with from a couple of years ago — but is still as valid as the day it was created, about Duplicate Content and here’s the explanation that they offered themselves on this infographic…

“With so much good content on the web, it’s inevitable that the same information will be displayed many times over. Whether it’s a blog post pointing to good statistics, an RSS feed pulled into a complementary site, or blatantly copied material, duplicate content can be an issue. This week’s infographic shows how search engines make distinctions between original and duplicate content…” 

And of course there’s tons more of the same….all pointing out in great creative how their people believe things “work” on the web!

Are they correct? Dunno about always all the time, as there are often comments for each of these that offer up counter points and variations on the same theme….but for the most part, I like their “take” on how things work, eh!

And I figured I’d offer up same here for our readers to go and look into same….and make their own decisions!

Happy viewing! And oh  yeah, you can even signup for an email notice when new ones are posted, a pretty cool thing too, eh!

If that describes where you “are” in your own DIY SEO strategy, then I’ve got two links for you….links for totally free “health checks” for your website or a clients…but a disclaimer is necessary up front, eh!

The links herein, all take you to URLs where you are asked to plug-in an URL for your site. This automatically starts that site’s scripts up to look at your chosen site and to grade it according to a formula developed by the company who owns this website audit site. This is both a good thing and a bad thing all at the same time.

Good thing, in that the two sites I’ve listed here do a fairly nice job of ranking the basic on-page SEO items that we SEO practitioners know about. That is, they all use say <title> tags and your use of same, to identify what exists on your chosen site, and then they “rank” that use by you (or anyone reallly) against a formula that they’ve developed. Better ranking %’s mean that according to your on-page SEO tactics, you’re doing well….or not! So a gentle reminder that all these audit sites use their own formulas, so the actual % shown will vary — sometimes drastically as in our own www.canuckseo.com rankings too….

But there is also a bad thing to consider too…that you should not ever believe that just because you got a 95% ranking from one of these website audit sites, that either your job is done…or that this ranking will bring traffic. Your job is never ever done, eh! You need to upgrade your content, your backlink campaigns on a daily basis almost to continue to grow and get your site up and up and up in the serps. And one more thing too that can be or may be mis-construed by users of these free website audit sites — and that is that your content, the actual text and images on your site that will appeal to visitors and begin the marketing of your products/services aimed at conversion IS NEVER RANKED by these sites. That only you can audit by using your conversion metrics…but on to the examples here for these URLs…

Website Grader is one of the best ones we’ve found, and it’s run by the folks over at Hubspot, a well known and respected online marketing firm. I like this site and always run our own sites as well as any client prospects too thru same to get a sense of how the site ranks using their formulas. A nice thing about this site tool, is that you have to insert your email address too…and they both offer up the online report as well as email you same with a link there to the saved online report too!  A nice touch and a point I’d like to add is that their formula I believe is one of the best that there is for website users! Oh, you can also add a ‘badge’ too with your score on same, a nice idea but a bit – just a bit IMHO, hokey…..but the choice is up to you of course!

Woorank is the other website free audit site I wanted to tell you about too and this site is the result of much hard work by a group of online marketers and creative designers and yes, it’s free…and it’s different formula wise too! I like woorank and I think you will too…it’s the same as the websiteGrader one, in that it goes to your chosen site URL, and maps out all the variables that it needs to create a score….and then shows same in a nice online report that you can also export out as a .pdf too, a nice touch. But this audit is different….

What do I mean? Well, the first example up above at websiteGrader gave this site a 95% score according to it’s own formula — and woorank gave a score of 49% for this site — a whopping difference, eh! Why is the question, and that’s all according to the formulas that these two firms have that does the ranking on this site – on any site that they’re asked to rank!

So when you run your sites through both of these free audit sites, you will need to be remembering that your ranks will be different as they have their own formulas and they value various on-page SEO items differently, eh! But run them through both you must do…to drill down through each report to see the line-by-line items and how each found something different to rank on…and where you’ve not as yet done enough on-page SEO tactically to get higher ranking scores. Doing that, we’ve found, is a great way to increase your on-page SEO dexterity….and that’s a good SEO habit to pickup, eh!

First, let us begin with the best of all original lists for Canadian citations, from David Mihm the well-known and respected LOCAL SEO expert, which can still be found here…. 

This list was the basis for our own listings, i.e. we very much liked that David had taken the time to look into our Canadian marketplace and give all of us Canadian SEO types a list to make our forays into the world of LOCAL search, so this is a solid beginning, eh!

Next, we added to that in our own blog posting here….back in November of last year, and those three additions are still solid citation performers as we’ve learned over the past 8 months for our own client listings. Dev Basu, another well known SEO practitioner who works out of  the Toronto area, also updated the listings for Canadian citations right here…and they too were added to our own master list which we’ve updated here for all you DIY Canadian SEO types, eh! 

Note too, that in our listing below we’ve found a few “new” ones to be added….so our own mid-year 2010 Canadian citations list now includes 28 working citations listings….here in Canada.

A note please on the layouts below which “do” include PageRank, Google’s proprietary ranking method on it’s own algo to measure the “value” of the link from each of these citation domains. As we’ve long ago learned that PR does NOT help in gaining you any serp traction, we do find — but as yet can’t truly correlate same — that PR does count it appears for LOCAL search linkjuice. We can not as yet “get” the value of that factor as it appears that for some of our clients, the juice from a PR of 8 does NOT get added to gain any more client channel traction…yet somehow a lower PR of 5 does! We don’t know why. We, like the rest of the SEO world, test and only believe empircal values…but that’s a whole other blog post, eh!

So here’s the latest list, our new Master Canadian citations listings for mid-year 2010!

Name	Citation	PageRank
YellowPages	YellowPages	8
BBB – Canada	BBB – Canada	8
Canpages	Canpages	7
411.ca	411.ca	7
Yelp.ca	Yelp.ca	7
WorldWeb	WorldWeb	7
CanadaOne	CanadaOne	6
Profile Canada	Profile Canada	6
Scott’s Info	Scott’s Info	6
WCities	WCities	6
WebLocal	WebLocal.ca	6
iBegin	iBegin	6
BELL Business	BELL	6
Found Locally	Found Locally	5
eSourceCanada	eSourceCanada	5
CanLinks	CanLinks	5
Canada Web Directory	Canada Web Directory	5
Shop In Canada	Shop In Canada	5
ZipLocal	ZipLocal	5
HotFrog	HotFrog.ca	5
Canadian Enviro	Canadian Environmental	5
Where.ca	Where.Ca	5
ZipLocal	Zip Local	5
YLM Canada	YLM Canada	5
N49	N49	4
CanadaDirect	CanadaDirect	4
BuyItCanada	BuyItCanada	4
Zoomit	ZoomIt	4

That’s pretty much, what we’ve found working here in google.ca land…we have succcessfully used them all, as shown, for various clients in many channels here in Canada and while we know that this list is a “working” list only….i.e. your own mileage may vary, we trust these enough to publish them here for all to see…and use! And if you DO find others, add them to the comment section here for us all to test against, if you will please? Would help all us SEO types, eh!

Yes, they are in the business of providing anti-virus, security software and data protection…it’s a commercial business that we found years ago from RackSpace our data center (voted best in NA and I’ll talk about their fanatical support at another time, eh!) — but what I like about SOPHOs is more — much more than that, eh!

First, there’s the software that you can get free trials and downloads on, just click and save and install. Then there are the free tools that offer up remote looks at your computer for everything from rootkits to network scans  that utilize their most up-to-date technologies and information. Then there are their enterprise level demos that can help with endpoint security from everything from email spam to MS Exchange management too. And if that’s not enough, they also have both pre-recorded live webinars on tons of topics and higher-end appliance demos too that you can register for right on their site. And then there’s the Hot Topics area….that’s chock full of more security notes too — go here to see same! And then there’s their “Threat Spotlight” that offers up daily updates on all things unsecure and web browsing, email phishing too. Trot over there for a good read anytime, eh!

All of that is great…but for many of you who’ve noticed a “new” widget on our site, yes….as you can see it’s the latest Safe Web Security widget from SOPHOS….that offers the following –

• Potentially dangerous sites
• How to choose a strong password
• The need to keep web browsers updated
• Staying safe on Facebook

It’s down there on the far right hand sidebar here on our site. When you land, it clicks itself “on” and then shows you in a few screens information about how to browse safely! These simple tips include pointers on all of the above and a click on the arrows will load either previous or next screens if you click on same, or they’ll all appear in a slide show.

Take a gander at same. They’re great tips and ones we should ALL remember in today’s browsing of the web, eh! It’s totally free. You can add it to your blog for free. It is GREAT info…and there is a full further many page .pdf too if you wish to know more about Safe Web Browsing, eh! Now that’s a deal to anyone anywhere!

Oh, one furtther thing to consider. SOPHOs is in the business of web security, so yes, they have top notch bloggers that post news and exploit discoveries almost daily. My own favourite is by Chester Wisniewski, and his blog always has something of value in it every single post….and here’s  a link to all that are offered…

Disclaimer: SOPHOs…we don’t know anybody there, we get nada from them financially now or ever and we expect only the help educate you readers on a great security asset you can get yourownselves, eh! So go…read…research…and gain security, eh!

This report was based on the findings of a daily tracking survey of Americans use of the internet, but I’m extrapolating here for us Canucks, eh! In fact, from all I’ve read, we Canadians embrace online Social Media MORE than our south of the border yankee friends….we love being online…and that means to me at least, that our own Canuck numbers and Canadian SEO are skewed even more in line with online reputation management….

Here’s  a sampling from that report…

Over time, several major trends have indicated growth in activities related to online reputation management:

• Online reputation-monitoring via search engines has increased – 57% of adult internet users now use search engines to find information about themselves online, up from 47% in 2006.
• Activities tied to maintaining an online identity have grown as people post information on profiles and other virtual spaces – 46% of online adults have created their own profile on a social networking site, up from just 20% in 2006.
• Monitoring the digital footprints of others has also become much more common—46% of internet users search online to find information about people from their past, up from 36% in 2006. Likewise, 38%% have sought information about their friends, up from 26% in 2006.

Okay, so I already had figured that more and more users were searching for their own names online on a regular basis, as they began to find that staying “on-top” of what is said about them as well as by them is a good idea, eh! But looking further into this report I found that when it comes to that personal ID search factor, more and more of us are becoming aware as the report cites that 84% of  users use search engines to check up on their digital footprints, compared with just 55% of other employed internet users. Among those who search for themselves, 44% do so at least every once in awhile, compared with 20% of other employed internet users…all very interesting and show a trend too, eh!

So, if you think that your own ID online is suspect…..that others might be “seeing” you in different guises than who and what you are….your first task would be to check. Google yourself. Yahoo yourself. Bing yourself…..and follow the resulting links to see just what has been indexed both “in” your favour, and not so “in” too, eh….

Incidentially, while your own mileage may very — but I check monthly on my own name (Jim Rudnick) I’ve noted lately that my results are almost at one million indexed hits….some of which it’s true aren’t me — but many are….and I can’t as yet determine how I could have such a large results number…’cept I’m always online…hey, maybe that’s it eh?

Am I surprised? Nope, not a bit. Am I a Facebook user, personally and commercially? Yes, I am. Do I think that the site does have privacy issues that are as yet, unresolved? Yes I do. Do I think the lawsuit, as described, has any merit? Um….that’s the question, eh?

The suit alleges that Facebook changed user privacy settings and its terms of service without adequate consent from users, rendering a significant amount of information public to the Web when it had once been protected. The lead plaintiff is a Winnipeg, Manitoba, resident named Donald J. Woligroski, and the complaint alleges that he “has been subject to, inter alia, breach of privacy and the misappropriation of his personal information and, in the addition or alternative, the conversion of said information for commercial use through the materially deceptive conduct of the Defendant”–that defendant being Facebook.

 However as you may remember, Facebook has already been under scrutiny by our own Canuck Privacy Commissioner who looked into their privacy controls and took issue with same forcing Facebook to make some modifications to same….and with over 40+% of all Canadians having a Facebook account, that’s a good thing, I think, especially as we’re always thinking about Canadian SEO!

While the actual merit of that suit, must be decided on the allegations and their factual basis by some judge somewhere yet to be determined, there is one more item I’d like to point out. That this Toronto based lawfirm, has listed on their site a lot of “class action” suits against everyone from “…numerous pharmaceutical companies, toy manufacturers, telecommunications companies that charged for 911 emergency calls, and “chocolate producers (who) conspired to keep chocolate prices in Canada artificially high…”

Hmm…that makes an impresssion on me, but postitive or negative….jury’s still out on that one, eh?

Links to various news sources on same are here ~

• http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/facebook_faces_litigation_onslaught_over_privacy_issues/
• http://www.slaw.ca/2010/07/04/the-canadian-facebook-privacy-class-action/
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20009956-36.html

This report is one of the ways in which MarketingSherpa tracks the latest trends in search marketing from over 2000+ agencies, companys and business owners to offer up insights and knowledge on what works!

Usually, MarketingSherpa combines both organic search and PPC search into one annual report, but this year for the first time, they’ve split the Report into two editions — this one dedicated to search engine optimization and a further one dedicated to pay-per-click search advertising.

Don’t have a full membership over at MarketingSherpa you’re thinking? Which might mean that their research and KB are not available for you and your clients? If that’s the case, then you can always download their 19 page PDF excerpt of same and look it over that way. If that depth and breadth of SEO factors interest you and you think that you’re going to learn more from the full 203 pages with 169 charts and tables on search AND social integration on marketing, budgets and metrics….then go for it! They’ve even got a 30 day free trial membership too for those of you who believe in market reasearch, MarketingSherpa is well worth the costs, eh!

Look, here’s one of their charts from the excerpt, that talks about SEO Maturity….

As you can see from the chart which asks the question “Please select the statement below that best describes the process your organization uses to perform SEO practices….” — and 46% have an informal while 34% have a formal process that they routinely perform! That’s about 80% of companies that have an SEO process in place of some type to perform SEO! That’s impressive to us as it means that more and more firms are looking to SEO to help drive new, targeted leads via website traffic! Great news for 2011, eh!

More? You want more? Okay, then how about these very interesting statistics….on the Perceptions of SEO at Budget Time. Contributors were asked this question…”Which statement best describes how SEO is perceived by your organization at budget time?”

As you can see, 24% said that SEO produces measurable ROI so let’s increase our budget liberally!!! WooHOO! And a further 43% said it’s a promising tactic and will eventually produce an ROI so let’s increase out budget conservatively….again all good things for us SEO practitioners to see ensconced in corporate mindsets, eh!

While space here doesn’t permit much depth on this Search Marketing Report, Ican tell you that the TOC for same runs 6 full pages and is chock full’a good stuff…so what’re you waiting for, anyways? Drop by the MarketingSherpa site to at the least download the Report excerpt and think about the value of the full report and access of ALL of their reports for the price of a membership! Solid business research from professionals, is how I’d describe such a deal…and it today’s business intelligence marketplace, a true winner, eh!

Well, I’m back from a two day quick trip to Cleveland and attending the #LocalU SEO Conference there offered up by David Mihm’s leadership over at getlisted.org! And what a trip it was, both the first-time drive to Cleveland on I-90 and the Conference itself.

You have to remember, that unless you do attend Conferences or Seminars in person, your whole on-line friendships will never ever be as “big” as they can be — hence the chance to attend this Google Places/LOCAL Conference was high on our list to meet online friends in person!  And we met a superb bunch of SEO types at the Conference itself as well as later over happy hour too!

David Mihm, whose blog has been on our Blogroll since we began, is the Seattle based SEO practitioner who offers up SEO both on a regular search basis as well as on LOCAL searches too. His annual Local Search Ranking Factors reports, compile results from 34 of the globes best SEO types and help rank the various algo items so that the rest of us can read/learn/research same for our own clients. His getlisted.org site offers up further research and learning opportunities — including being the host for the #LocalU Conferences that have been run. The one that I attended just on Wednesday past, was their #3 offering and they’ve got many more planned over the next few months too! My advice here is to ATTEND! Signup and get your rear into one of those seats to learn all you can about Local search opportunities….I did and I and my clients are happy already that I attended as David provided a solid tactic that I’d never ever considered before! I’m going to code same this weekend and install same for a client next week, so thanks muchly David!

Matt McGee, yes another Blogroll link on this site,  is one more person that I finally met in person at the Cleveland #LocalU conference. Matt is well known online for many various blogging and SEO domains – his Hyperlocalblogger.com site offers up info on working your locale for blog authority; his smallbusinesssem.com site offers up search marketing help for small business and his columns and articles over at searchengineland.com point out to all of us the varities of search engine characteristics that are always undergoing change! Matt presented on the whole Social Media area and how using various tactics can help achieve both better online reputation and help prove your online credibility in your own community at the same time! Thanks Matt!

Mike Blumenthal, another Blogroll link here too, is known the continent over as “Mr Local” was a third online friend who I finally got to meet in person which was really a great comfort to me. I’ve been reading Mike’s blog over at blumenthals.com/blog/ now for a few years and to meet this expert in person was truly a great thing. Mike knows Local, and his blog and his comment sections are chock’full of tactics, ideas, hypotheses, testing and reporting….can you ask for any better? I think not! This day, as some of the scheduled experts had to send their regrets, Mike had to “fill in” for a few and his approach to their material — as well as to his own, was a great capture by us Conference attendees! I learned much from both the “ABC’s of Local Search” as well as his own pointed approach to “Ranking your Business in Local Search!” too! Well done, Mike. Oh and an aside…Mike has a new iPhone and used it both in his presentation — he showed the power of Google via a mobile search and contacted a client in that manner in real time — as well as he used the iPhone all evening too…to constantly search for info on any topic we discussed! As both Mike and Matt pointed out, mobile seach is truly a coming item to pay big attention to….and that goes for us all, eh!

Other presenters there were just as complete and spot-on with their own presentations; we heard from a Bing Local Listing rep, Maryam Gholami who walked us through their Listing Center and from Anita Campbell, of Small Business Trends (who own bizsugar.com btw!) on how to prioritize your time when it comes to social media….as well as Geoff Karcher of the Karcher Group who showed the basics of search engine result marketing and how small business can improve their visibility too!

Great Conference? Yes! Did I attend thinking I’d learn a lot? Not really, we’ve been involved in SEO for 10 years now, and in Local for over 2 years…but I was MOST surprised that I did pickup quite a few great tips at the presentations. I really attended to put “a face” to join my own online friendships with the top Local experts in the country is the real “why” I went…but learn stuff I did!

And lastly a personal thank you to those same experts, David and Matt and Mike and others too, who joinedup a bit after the Conference at Champs for some beers and then a smaller group for dinner!  The talk then was of a more ‘client-oriented’ subject matter — what works and doesn’t work for us on an individual basis. It was my luck to sit close to Mike at that dinner and listen/watch as he expounded on some of the varieties of Google’s local search algo….interspersed with iPhone lookups/and searches….Mike does love that iPhone, eh! And David, your true hospitality is both muchly appreciated and I will reciprocate at the next #LocalU I go to — hopefully you’ll offer up an Advanced segment too!

So….I await notice of the next fairly close #LocalU from getlisted.org and would comment that if you’ve ever considered ranking for the 600 million Google local searches that are done daily, you too should go to getlisted.org and sign up for notices of the next Conference….it’s really worth going, eh!

Other very knowledgeable SEO folks I met who attended were ~
• Jim Gianoglio of LunaMetrics in Pittsburg, PA….great fella who knows SEO, eh!
• Michael Feuti of ChannelNet of Dearborn, MI…another astute and well spoken SEO guy
• Craig James of story-cast.com….an entrepeneur who has his eyes on the horizon

UPDATE ~

Jim Gianoglio of LunaMetrics nicely just provided the following photos from the Cleveland #LocalU Conference and even of our ‘happy hour’ later too!

In this pix, we have myself (with the Peace Sign, eh!), next to me going left is Dave Jabas, then Mike Blumenthal, David Mihm, Mike Feuti, Anita Campbell and Mike McGee…all actively chatting on all things Google, eh!

In this pix, we have Mike Blumethal (in the yellow shirt) making a point to David Mihm and Anita Campbell! Go Mike Go!

And a shot of all of us at dinner later…thanks David! Great to sup with folks who live & breathe SEO, eh!

That is, for any search engine statistical numerical comparison, three word phrases drive more traffic to a website than any other number of words in the search phrase! And that is very very encouraging for us SEO practitioners, eh! How’s that? Well, let’s take a look/see at their report numbers…

Let’s look at the full sized graph, shall we?

As you can see, their sample is just over 40 million hits and for that statistically, they found that a three word phrase ranked up at the top for over 25% of those hits! The next top word counts were two-word (19%), four-word (17%), and finally one-word (14%).  Any query beyond five words will see dramatically lower traffic, throwing into perspective just how fragmented traffic from long queries really is….for those of you who think that a nine word long tail keyphrase has some “power” we note as they did, that such a length is well past the “sweet spot” eh, especially here for Canadian SEO campaigns!

So, if you’re thinking “long tail” and know already that such a search phrase does have a higher conversion rate, then I’d also think “three words” too, and offer up a shortened keyphrase similar search opportunity as well…no sense in missing out on these ones too, eh!