Don’t Link To Me?

It amazes me that some companies try so hard to not be linked from a search engine, while every SEO person I know is struggling to get links. Copiepresse, an organization which manages copyright for the Belgian French- and German-speaking press (I won’t link to them because I don’t want to have them mad at me – lol), went after Google to stop them from producing snippets of articles on Google. They seem to think that the links from Google news were impacting the revenue stream of their clients. Their logic seemed a little shakey at best to me. Hmmm… Links => Potential Visitors => Revenue… sounds simple to me.

Note to search engines: I have meta descriptions and links both available whenever you want to link to me

This just seems so bizarre to me. I would actually like to see Google comply. Just remove every last link to these newspapers. Then we will see if their revenue takes a hit.Â

Increasing Page Views Part Two

Another simple way to increase page views on your site is to add search functionality. You are trying to keep the user on your site, and if they are searching your site, then you have at least one more page view (the search results), and assuming that you have some content related to what they are searching for, you will likely get another click when the follow through on their results.

Adding search can be done in a terribly easy manner or a terribly complicated manner, and at any level in between. The absolute simplest approach assuming you do not already have it built in (many blog tools do), is to incorporate a Google search box that defaults showing your website’s results. When a user searches, they will be presented with a list of matching pages (per Google’s algorithm) that have been spidered by Google. These pages do not need to have a phenomenal page rank, as only your results will be shown.

At the other extreme of implementing search is the development of a site specific search solution. For custom written sites, this may be the best solution. With a custom solution, you can come up with your own weighting scheme and search algorithm in general. You may want to tag your content with category values (ah, more blog built in features), or some multi-field meta value weighting system.

An e-commerce site may be limited to a custom solution as it is highly likely that some of the deeper product pages may not be spidered by Google due to having parameter based Url’s. Even if their pages are spidered, they may want a custom solution that ranks results on other variables (e.g., product price, product margins, product availability).

In any case, all websites with more than just a few pages of content should consider implementing search functionality whether for simply increasing page views, or to increase sales or leads.

Increasing Page Views Part One

I view search engine optimization as a supplemental means by which a publisher gets users to their website. Supplemental because absent any effort on a publishers part, some users will find their way to a site. Once you get the user to your site, SEO is not the key to keeping them there. At that point, you have to use things like engaging content and a pleasing user interface to keep them there… to increase page views.

Why is this important some may ask? More page views almost always translates into more revenue (assuming you have at least some CPM component to your revenue model). Banners from networks like Casale, FastClick, Tribal Fusion, etc, pay almost exclusively on a CPM model. More page views generally means more money to a point.

So how do you keep users on your site? One of the simplest ways I have found is to simply point out related content. The user is looking at a page on your site for some reason. If the content you are showing is relevant, there is a reasonable shot that the user may click on the link for the related content. On my FoodClassics.com site, adding a short list of related recipes to my view recipe page raised average page views by approximately 25% over the several months since I put it in place. As I go back and link related recipes across the entire site (I’ve only retrofitted roughly 50% of the recipes so far – the most viewed), I am hoping to add at least another 10% increase to page views.

While this process required some code and template rewriting on my part, the monthly revenue boost has paid off already. In many ways this is not much different than category links on almost all blogs. The major difference is that you are saying to your user… “Hey, I know you know how to get to related content via my category links, but here are some specific content blocks that are more closely related to what you are viewing right now.”