I wanted to share a case study about a new home page design that helped a client in the estimated tax business improve conversions. The results have been great so far – up 83%.

First, let’s get the background info on the client (Easy Estimated Taxes) out of the way. Easy Estimated taxes is a site that allows taxpayers to manage their quarterly estimated tax payments. Taxpayers can pay their estimated tax payments out of their bank account, keep record of their payments, and they get reminders of when their next payment is due.

Probably the most important thing to know about the business is that it’s seasonal. There are four payment periods per year and their traffic peaks during those four periods. That means those four periods are super important to them – it’s how the business sustains itself for the entire year. By now you’re putting 2 and 2 together and realizing that their site needs to perform during its peak period. If not, then they have to wait 3 months for another peak to come around.

The client had the following goal: get more of the existing traffic into their sales funnel. Put another way, get more of the people that visit the site clicking on the right call-to-action.

Accomplishing this goal goes beyond making the call-to-action button larger. There are some subtle details we had to address to make people comfortable with clicking that call-to-action. In other words, not only should people click it, but they have to want to click it because they were confident that Easy Estimated taxes would provide the services it claims to provide.

Here’s the design before we got our hands on it:

Here’s what we noticed needed to be adjusted to help accomplish the client’s goals:

1. Above the fold was actually decent. There is a clear call-to-action with fairly easy -to-understand text. There is always room for improvement, however.
2. Everything below the fold looked inconsistent with the rest of the page. In the tax-related industry, it’s incredibly important to convey a strong, professional, and trustworthy appearance. Users in this industry are highly skeptical of sites that don’t appear to be run by the government.
3. It wasn’t clear to the user how much the service cost.

After some iterating, here’s the design that we launched for the client in time for the last peak period (September 15, 2011):

We focused on conveying more trust, tweaking the text to better educate potential customers, and increasing the perception that the site is a legitimate, trusted way to pay estimated taxes online.

The results were all very positive:
When compared to the previous quarter, 83% more customers completed the signup for the site. Most importantly, the client was psyched!

Thoughts, comments, or questions? Let’s discuss i the comment section below.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the title tag in the search snippet for one of our clients completely changed. Well, that doesn’t sound too horrible or harmful you say. Normally that’s right. Sometimes titles in snippets can be altered by the search engines and in rare cases can improve click-thru rates (I still recommend controlling all information in snippets with custom META data for every single page on your site).

The issue in this case was that the title tag now included information referring back to a really old (and outdated) sponsor…like years old. Even though the META data and the code said one thing (and keep in mind hadn’t been touched for at least a year), the title tag said something completely different.

Check it out. Here’s a screenshot of the source code:

And here’s a screenshot of what a users would see on Bing (and Yahoo) when searching for “holiday bowl”:

Notice anything strange? Hint: the title tag in the search results does not match what’s in the source code. In fact, nowhere on the Holiday Bowl home page does it even mention the word “Culligan”.

So what gives? And more importantly, how can it be fixed?

I had heard that sometimes the search engines pull META data from DMOZ and use that in snippets – overriding what a website has in its source code. So I checked DMOZ to see if that was true in this case.

Here’s what I found when I did a search for “holiday bowl” on DMOZ:

There it is! There’s the source of our pain. Bing and Yahoo are pulling “Culligan” from DMOZ and using it in the snippet.

After a quick search, I was able to find and install the following script into the home page code telling the search engines to ignore the META description in DMOZ and use what’s in the source code:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>

After about 4 days the title tag was back to normal:

Hooray! It’s fixed. Bing and Yahoo are pulling from the right source and “Culligan” has disappeared from the snippet.

Whenever you see this problem with one of your sites, just use this simple-to-implement fix and you’ll see results very quickly.

Have you ever had this problem? Did you use this method to fix it? Let’s discuss in the comment section below.

Here’s a list of basic questions I use when performing a website evaluation or audit on a client website. It gets more technical and geeky than this, but my hope is that this fives you a good idea of some of the things I do to help turn websites around.

GENERAL: questions I ask directly of the owner, or team that runs the website
1. What are the goals of the website? I want to hear from the website’s brass what they are trying to accomplish. It’s not always obvious. And it’s not always what they should be trying to accomplish. Often time there aren’t even any goals.
2. What the history of the website? Tell me specific details about sales (or membership) trends?
3. What’s the history of the site’s SEO strategy? What effect has that had on the site’s performance?
4. Have there been any major traumatic events (like de-indexing or site outages)? How have those affected sales and performance?
5. What’s your keyword strategy? If they have a strategy, I’ll ask to see the latest data they’ve accumulated about what keywords they consider to be most valuable.
6. How well has the stated keyword strategy been implemented on the site?
7. What is your content strategy?

The rest of the questions are what I ask as I evaluate the website.

ON-PAGE SEO
8. Is there any meta data structure? If so, was it done properly?
9. Does the site use unique, intelligent, SEO-friendly page titling?
10. What does the site’s meta data and page titling say about the company’s grasp of keywords?
11. How SEO-savvy is the URL structure being used?
12. What’s the internal linking strategy?
13. How healthy is the code?
14. How much (if at all) is the code affecting the site’s ability to be indexed?
15. Are there any site maps?
16. Do any of the search engines know about their site maps?
17. Are there any RSS feeds?
18. Do the search engines know about their RSS feeds?
19. What does their Webmaster Tools Account reveal?

TRAFFIC
20. What are the traffic patterns (if any) in terms of volume?
21. How is traffic now compared to a historical average? Higher? Lower? Why?
22. Where’s the website’s traffic coming from?
23. Why is traffic coming from those sources? Is is because of link partnerships? Publicity? Blog mentions? Comments?
24. What percentage of the traffic is coming from organic search?
25. What percentage of traffic is coming from paid search?
26. What’s the relationship between the traffic source and the user’s behavior on the site (pageviews, time on site)?
27. What’s the relationship between the traffic source and the conversion rate?
28. In case of higher conversion, what can we learn that can be applied to other sources?
29. In cases of low conversion, why are people not converting into customers? What appears to be the roadblock?

KEYWORDS
30. What keywords does the website rank for?
31. What, specifically, are those ranks per keyword across all search engines?
32. Is there historical data to show how those ranks have changed?
33. What kind of penetration does the website have in organic search?
34. How does the site rank for the search terms they said they were targeting?
35. Are the keywords the website is targeting the right ones? If not, how much potential traffic is being missed as a result?

COMPETITION
36. What’s the state of competition in the industry? Who does the client think they are competing with?
37. According to search (not according to sales), who are they competing with?
38. What are their competitors doing better/worse than they are in terms of content strategy?
39. What do their competitor’s link profiles have that’s missing from our client’s website?

CONTENT & LINKS
40. What’s the state of inbound links?
41. Are the current inbound links helping or hurting?
42. According to the competitor data, are there immediate link-building opportunity?

Darn…didn’t make it to a nice even number like 50!

The answers to these questions help me put together an evaluation designed to help clients  get more qualified traffic and convert at a higher rate.

Have any questions of your own? Are you an SEO with a similar checklist? Feel free to comment or compare your experiences with me in the comment section below.

Qualified traffic.

Small business owners and startups who rely heavily on their website for sales all stress over how to get more of it. Oh, and they want it cheap. Quite the conundrum!

There are lots of ways to get more traffic. All involve some level of investment (either time or money). None involve some level of magic (unfortunately, because that would be kind of cool).

Success acquiring qualified traffic starts with getting the basics right first. And the basics don’t always involve hiring a super-expensive SEO firm that claims they are going to make you millions in 3 months (by the way if anyone tells you that, just hang up).

If your website can do all of the following, you’ll see more qualified traffic. And it won’t burn a huge hole in your wallet.

1. SEO fundamentals - if you are going to do just one thing, this is the one. This all starts with making sure your keyword list is accurate (pertains to your specific products and services) and realistic. For example, stop trying to compete for the broad keywords that the big brands shell out tens of thousands of dollars per month to dominate. Start out with local terms and build your way up. If you can afford it, hire a professional to build that keyword list for you. If you don’t get that list right, it will make everything else on this list a lot harder.

Use those keywords to build your URLs and meta data (page titles and meta descriptions). Get those keywords in H1 tags, alt tags, and in the content (without blatantly stuffing them in there). Do all of these things are your website will have the basic foundation you need to start chasing organic traffic.

2. Choose the right domain - whenever possible, build your website (or an affiliate website to feed your website traffic) around an exact match domain. For example, if your business is in car insurance, the most valuable domain in that industry will be carinsurance.com. Domains that are an exact match get bonus points from the search engines that can be tough for competitors to overcome.

3. Link-worthy content – search engines love quality, unique content. And they like to see lots of it being added frequently. Coming up with a 6-12 month content strategy for your website is crucial. And every bit of content you create should always be worthy of a link, meaning someone reads it and thinks it’s so good that they want to link to it from their website or blog. If it doesn’t pass the linkworthiness test, toss it and move on to the next idea. Remember, links are GOLD. The more links you can acquire from quality and relevant sources, the better it will perform in organic search (which should lead to more traffic).

3A. Linkbait - this is a lot easier said than done. It’s almost like trying to come up with an idea for a viral video. Everyone tries it, but very few execute it to the point they get a return. The thing I always tell people when they ask how to create something viral is to look within to see if your business produces unique data. Then think of a way to present it in a clever, visual way that doesn’t require any heavy lifting to understand. The best recent example I can think of was this post by Mint. This may or may not have come from internal data, but it sure garnered a lot of attention because it was topical and easy-to-grasp (especially the video). Look at all of the retweets and comments! Best of all, they picked up hundreds of links. That’s the real value.

4. Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising - this is the the fastest way to pick up lots of qualified leads. It can also be the most expensive. If you have money to burn, try it yourself but don’t get frustrated with the long learning curve. Chances are you’ll be competing with professionals that really know how to play the PPC game. So many companies try to manage this on their own and become so disenchanted with the whole thing that refuse to get involved again. All that does is block a very valuable source of traffic. So either be patient or hire a pro.

5. StumbleUpon - these days you have to be really lucky to have something get hot on Digg or Reddit. Don’t waste your time trying to compete. Stumble is an easy way to pick up some traffic. And it’s free to Stumble your own content! Just make sure when you Stumble something that you put it in the right category.

6. Word-of-mouth - take extra good care of your customers and you will be rewarded. The more you make them feel like you’re listening, the more likely they are to refer you to their friends. It doesn’t cost anything to treat someone right.

7. Two-way conversation - make your site social. The key here is you have to have great content. Try to write only about things that your target audience really cares about. Offer them a place to discuss it with you (like in a comment section). Not only will you get return traffic but you’ll learn a lot about what your customers think and want from a product like yours.

Here’s what didn’t make the list: Facebook and Twitter.

Look, you’re a startup or a small business. There are only so many hours in the day and resources are most likely not unlimited. I think having Facebook pages and Twitter accounts are time traps. Everyone says, follow me on Faceboook and and Twitter! But how many companies are really doing things on either that’s producing business? Very few. And it’s mostly big brands that can pay people to just monitor their presence on those properties. Until you can afford to do that, put all of your money towards getting traffic to your website.

Have you tried any of these tips? What was your experience? Let’s chat in the comment section below.

It happens to every business.

Usually with experienced entrepreneurs it happens before doors officially open.  For others it happens 3 months, or 6 months, or even 12 months after an official launch.

Eventually, a business will see the light. And it’s a strong light. A light where sunglasses are required, and maybe some SPF to be safe. Inevitably, once that light hits there’s smiling, some high-fiving, and that certain satisfaction that comes with making a discovery.

The light that every business eventually sees is the realization that their success is intimately tied to how their website performs in the search engines. All of a sudden it becomes clear that in order to thrive the business has to make itself known to the throngs of potential customers that are looking for their products or services through search. Pretty powerful light, right?

After the band stops playing music and the enthusiasm subsides, a BIG question looms like a black cloud: is it too late to do anything about it? Is our business too far down the road to reverse our failure to see the light until now?

The answer is a emphatic NO. It’s never too late.

Granted, it’s a heck of a lot easier if your company has a search engine optimization strategy from Day 1, but as long as a business has enough breath in it’s lungs to survive at least a few more months then there’s a chance to make something very good happen by leveraging the light.

Just how long it will take to jumpstart a businesses’ search profile depends on a few things:

1. Competition - how sophisticated are the strategies being deployed by the other companies in that industry? Are they investing tens of thousands of dollars per year into search? Or, are they still in the dark? The more sophisticated the competition, the longer it will take to make a dent in the problem, let alone compete directly. But that doesn’t mean a company can’t make up some ground pretty quickly.

2. History - Before the realization, was the business completely ignoring seo or was it inadvertently caught in a cycle of bad habits? And, how much content has been created? Are we dealing with a website that has hundreds or thousands of pages of content? The point is this: how much damage has been done and how much has to be fixed? A website with poor seo habits and thousands of pages of content is a larger rescue effort than a small website that has good content but didn’t employ any of the basic seo fundamentals.

3. Commitment - seeing the light is the first step. Committing to a long-term plan is something different. Results can take time. And the longer a business can commit to a plan, the better the chances it will see results. In other words, committing to a 4-week plan isn’t the right strategy for a business that’s gone 2 years without doing anything for seo.

To those companies who have just seen the light, welcome to the real world. Try not to focus on the time that’s been lost. Instead, figure out what you’re going to do to change the tide. Come up with a plan and commit to it.

Has your business recently seen the light? I’d love to hear about it in the comment section below.

News flash: running your own business is tough. There are a cagillion things to do and only so many minutes in a day. It’s inevitable that important success factors will get overlooked – especially when the business is just getting started.

One of the most often overlooked aspects of a companies first marketing plan is search engine optimization. For some reason, it slips between the cracks for so many small businesses. I think what happens, especially with a lot of first-time entrepreneurs or young companies, is there’s a natural desire to plow through the startup checklist so that the business can start and hopefully the money will begin rolling in.

You know the checklist, right? You’ve probably done it yourself.  Name for the business? Check. Bank account? Open. Domain? Grabbed it. Logo? Designed it. Website? Launched. Coffee maker? Brewing as we speak.

Eventually the checklist moves to marketing and,  ‘How exactly are we going to get people to pay us for our product or service?’. The key mistake that most startups make is assuming that just having a website is enough. They think, ‘Well, we have something out there for people to check out. It looks really cool and does a good job of selling our product. So, we’re covered there.’

What’s missing from that logic? The business didn’t bother to think through how exactly they are going to get traffic, and better yet qualified traffic, to visit their website. And so what usually happens is a company will look at their analytics after 90 days of being in business and realize traffic and leads from the website is nonexistent.

In a past post I wrote about the importance of launching your first website before you launch your company. This is different. What you need to have is a full SEO plan. I recommend that you generate at least a 6-month SEO strategy when starting a new business.

At a high level, here’s what you need to include:
Keyword research: find out what your industry’s most valued keywords are and start competing for them. Be sure to constantly monitor progress and don’t be afraid to re-evaluate keyword priorities every few months. This is the most important step in an SEO strategy. If you’re not going after the right traffic, or traffic that’s too competitive for a young company, you won’t get the traffic needed to survive.

Content strategy: it doesn’t matter how much you have, the content on your website the day it launches is not enough. Every website needs a vehicle for adding quality content rich in the most valuable keywords on a consistent basis. The easiest, and highest ROI SEO vehicle to add is a blog. Other examples are resource or educational sections. Ideally, there’s new content being added every day. That can be a drain on resources, however. So try to at least add something a couple of times per week.

I can’t emphasize enough how important a content strategy is for your website. Without some kind of plan to add new content, it will fall by the wayside. I see it all the time with my clients. Spend a day or two planning out 50, 100, 200 blog posts and then figure out a plan for getting them done.

Pay-per-click plan: at some point you need to test the pay-per-click waters. Every business should. Set aside the cash you need to at least test buying keywords. One of two things will happen: either it works and you’ve found an additional way to get qualified leads, or it doesn’t work and there are lessons that can be learned. For example, did you get a lot of click-thru’s but low conversions? That’s usually a sign the website needs to be optimized for conversion. Either way, make sure that the person managing the campaign is an SEO professional. Don’t try to do it yourself unless you’re willing to spend through the learning curve…and there is a learning curve.

Do those three things and you’ll be ahead of the game when it comes to having a smart marketing plan for a young company.

What’s been you experience with defining an SEO strategy? Let’s talk about it in the comments section below.

I’m taking a chance that few who read this blog are as passionate as I am about college football and search engine optimization. I realize that. But there is a link. I promise. Just let me explain.

Bobby Bowden (below) is a legend in college football. He is a Hall-of-Fame coach that has won more games than almost anyone who has ever coached the sport (388 to be exact). He’s 80 years old and is in the news because he just decided (some say forced to decide) to retire after this season ends.

Bowden will be remembered for a lot of positive things – but the hard core college football junkie will remember him for recruiting speed. In its heyday, Bowden’s Florida State teams won with a whirlwind of pure athleticism and speed. His players were just plain faster than the other teams’. And as the saying goes, “There’s no defense for speed”.

So what’s this got to do with SEO? Google announced today an experimental feature called Site Performance making its debut in Webmaster Tools. And guess what? It’s all about speed!

Google has said that they want to make the web faster. Now they are giving every webmaster a way to check and see just how fast their site downloads in a browser. Google’s theory is a lot like Bowden’s – speed is essential to winning. And in the search giant’s clase they are talking about winning customers. The faster a page downloads, the more likely a person is to have a better experience on the site. In turn, the site will be more profitable due to higher retention rates.

Not only does Site Performance provide download times, it also tells you how speed on certain pages can be improved.

So what is Google getting at? Speed is becoming increasingly important for SEO. Although they haven’t come out and said this verbatim (correct me if I am wrong here), it sure feels like Google is trying to tell everyone that speed is going to be a consideration for search rank. So that means we all need to consider optimizing our download speeds folks.

To see Site Performance, click on the “Labs: link on the Webmaster Tools left-hand menu.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

I got an email today that I wanted to share with you loyal readers. The title was 1st Page Results Guaranteed. Now I never ever read emails that are obvious spam. Even though I knew the contents of this one would be garbage, I couldn’t resist.

Here’s what it said:
“Do you wish you could increase your online leads? Getting a GUARANTEED 1ST PAGE GOOGLE RANKING is easier and more cost-effective than you might think. We have helped a lot of businesses thrive in this market and we can help you! Simply hit reply and I’ll share with you the cost and the benefits. See you at the top!”

Have you seen an email like this one before? What about a claim on an SEO’s website similar to this? Or maybe you’ve been told something like this when you’ve met with a search engine optimization firm. If you have, hopefully you deleted it before picking up the phone. If you haven’t, you are lucky because guarantees like these seem to be everywhere.

If you have not seen or heard anything like this before, then I am going to give you a visual to keep in mind for when you do. I want you to associate the SEO guarantee with this picture:

Yes, the SEO guarantee is a pile of garbage. Here’s the super-simplified version of why:

1. Chances are the company that sent this to me did so via an automated script. It’s a mass emailing to a ton of people. That company has no idea what industry I am involved in. A huge part of SEO has to do with the competitive landscape in your industry. For example, there’s a tremendous difference in the amount of work required when it comes to getting on the first page for “baseball tickets” (254M results) versus “san diego software developer” (3.45M results). And that’s just one metric. A good SEO can’t just look at your website for a minute and tell you exactly what it will take to help you. They need to do their homework on your website’s SEO history and the competition that’s getting better results than you.

2. Things can change in an instant. For example, we have clients who are listed on the first page for results of valuable keywords but their slot on that first page changes literally every day. For example, some days Google will add news results. Some days they’ll add maps. Both of those drastically affect results. Trust me, search engines constantly tweak their algorithms. There’s no way anyone in their right mind should ever stake a guarantee on something as volatile as search.

3.  Lack of transparency. At the end of the day, no one outside of search engine company employees know the secret sauce. The beauty of SEO is that it’s open to interpretation. There are a number of different thories about what’s effective and what’s not. That being said, there are a ton of things that really good SEOs know how to do. And those things work for more often than not. But it’s not because they have been given secret access to the Google magic. They are successful because they are experienced. And any experienced SEO will never flaunt a gaurantee in front of your face becuase they know that’s crazy.

So, look out for the SEO gurantee. If you hear it or see it, move on to the next company. Hopefully they will know what they are talking about.

Have you ever been given the SEO guarantee? I’d love to hear your story in the comments section below.

I love working with startups. I’ve been a part of several (some successful, some not) and have been lucky to work with a bunch of startup or early-stage clients with Brand5. There’s always so much energy and optimism working with brand new companies. It’s a blast to help them out and watch them try to make it. In each situation, I learn incredibly valuable lessons that can be applied to future projects.

I want to touch on a common mistake that I see a lot of startups make when it comes to planning the launch of their website. Companies that have it in their marketing plan to rely on traffic from organic search (regardless of the expected percentage) fail to take into account search engine lead-time. As a result, there’s a gap between the launch of the site and the beginning signs of organic traffic.

Here’s usually what happens: Company X plans to launch their website on a certain date. For the sake of this example, let’s say July 1. As they work on getting their website built and ready for launch, there’s nothing (maybe at most a landing page saying “Coming Soon”) live on their domain.

July 1 rolls around and Company X launches their website. By the end of their first few days, Company X looks at their analytic and sees no one coming to their website via organic traffic. They wonder, “Where’s the love from Google?”.

Here’s the problem – Company X didn’t do anything to let Google know they existed before July 1. They never opened a Webmaster Tools account or submitted a sitemap. And the big problem is that Company X is now on Google’s clock. They have to wait around for Google to acknowledge the website exists and slowly start to creep into results. There’s no telling how long Company X will have to wait. It may take months for traffic to start seeping in, especially if Company X is in a highly-competitive industry for keywords.

Here’s how to avoid this common mistake:

As soon as you finalize your domain, launch something. At the very least, launch a landing page that has optimized title and description tags. A bonus would be to put some text on the page using your most valued keywords. In other words, give Google some indication of how they should index the website. While you’re at it, add analytics code to the site. There probably won’t be any traffic, but if there is, you want to know where it came from.

2-3 months from your hard launch, do a soft launch. I realize every company is different. Some want to be super-quiet and don’t want anyone to know about them. I understand that (sort of). But for the rest of you, upgrade that single landing page to at least a few pages – enough for a sitemap of more than one page. Consider adding more keyword-rich content and make sure every new page has optimized title and description tags. Most of all, submit a sitemap to Google through Webmaster Tools.

Make sure early traffic knows how to find you. If you are worried about getting potential leads too early, give people a reason to find out more about the company. Tell them your website will email them when it launches. Ask them to call or email you if they want more information now.Don;t just have something that says “Coming Soon”. No one will ever remember to come back again.

Bottom line: regardless of how little you think your new website is going to rely on organic search for traffic (trust me it will be way more than you plan for, it always is), don’t wait until launch to set the wheels in motion with search engines. Get your sitemaps submitted as far in advance as you can so pages can start getting indexed. Anything you can do to minimize the gap between launch and letting search engines your website exists will pay off.

I’ve said it before – an overwhelming majority of the business owners I meet these days want to talk about search engine optimization and Internet marketing. That’s fine by me. I love talking about it.

Last night I was at a networking event and was reminded of a very common theme that I have experienced lately: business owners are generally aware of the importance of inbound links (links from other websites to their website), but a lot of them (anecdotally, I’d estimate as many as 8 out of 10) don’t know any of the following:

• How many links are pointing to their website
• What links are pointing to their website
• Exactly what pages on their website are the recipients of links

As a result, they also don’t know other really crucial things such as:

• How many broken links (links coming from other websites that are now dead because the page has been moved or deleted) are out floating around on other websites

There’s an easy and FREE way to check all of these things through Google Webmaster Tools (WMT). (I’ve said this before as well – a WMT account is mandatory for website owners, whether or not they actually manage their website.)

BRIEF TANGENT:  I don’t necessarily blame business owners that don’t know about basic tools like this. Many don’t actually manage their website. They have plenty of things to do like grow their company. To me, the really troubling thing is that their webmasters don’t know either. And if they do know, they are not sharing this valuable and easily-available data with their clients. Trust me on this: if your webmaster isn’t checking this regularly, then they aren’t doing their job.

So the first step is to get a WMT account.

The next step is to verify that you have the necessary access to that website. That’s done by either uploading an HTML file (that Google will provide) to your website’s root folder or some meta data (again, Google will provide it) to your website.

Once that’s done, let the good times roll! Within a few weeks, you’ll start seeing data trickle in. For the sake of this post, you’ll want to pay attention to the “Your Site on the Web” link on the left of your screen. Click that and you’ll have access to a link called “Links to Your Site”. That’s the one that will tell you all of the data we’ve listed above.

What’s really cool is that you can click any of the pages on your site that have inbound links and find out exactly where those links come from. And if your curious, you can click any of those inbound links and see the actual page that’s linking to your website.

Note: this tool is not real-time. So if you publish a great new blog post today that you know a lot of people are going to link to, allow WMT some time (up to a few weeks) to find those links.

To sum it all up, links to your website are gold when it comes to SEO. As the very least, you should know what your link portfolio looks like. Google’s Webmaster Tools is a great way for you to get a handle on who is linking to your website and where exactly they are linking.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Try this exercise: go to Google and search for your business name and location.

For comparison, here’s what comes up if you search for “brand5 la jolla”:

Does the top result for your search include a link to your website, a map, and a link to “more information”? If so, your business is part of Google’s Place Pages.

If you do see something like the picture above, who is controlling the content for that Place Page? Here’s a hint: it’s either you or Google.

If you have already created a Place Page on your own or claimed ownership, congrats! If you haven’t, then make sure you do so right away through Google’s Local Business Center (you’ll need a Google account to do so).

Who cares about Place Pages? Every business owner should. According to Google, “A Place Page is a webpage for every place in the world, organizing all the relevant information about it. By every place, we really mean *every* place — there are Place Pages for businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world.”

Here’s a screenshot of what Brand5′s Place Page looks like (again, you get this page if you click “more information” in the search results:

So, whether you like it or not, Google will create a page for your business (especially if it can be associated with an address on Google Maps). Since that is reality, it’s your responsibility to make sure that page is updated and reflective of your brand.

Here’s why: even though Google promises not to index these pages, some traffic will inevitably find these pages before they find your website. That means you have another landing page out there that could mean the difference between potential business choosing you over the competition.

Here are 4 ways to optimize your place page:
1. Make sure all of your general info (address, phone number, store hours, services offered) is current and accurate. That means every time you change similar info on your website, you have to update your Place page.

2. Add images and videos of your location or services. Anything you can do to personalize either your location or the services you offer will go a long way towards selling to your customers. For example, if you have a restaraunt, post some images of your clean, beautiful eatery as well as some shots of your food.

3. Offer a coupon. Give Place Page visitors a unique offer that can’t be found anywhere else. That will help you track your page’s effectiveness and popularity.

4. If you don’t have any reviews, get some! Either get past customers to go to your Yelp profile and post a review (they’ll automatically populate on your Place Page) or have them leave one directly on Google (there’s a prompt on your Place Page).

Place Pages won’t ever be more important that your own website, but this is another lesson in the importance of maintaining all of the touch points that people use to find your business.

You may have noticed a recent subtle change to some search results on Google. In an effort to help people find the information they want faster and easier, Google has started putting links within the search snippets (more commonly known as results. The new links are not just to a page, but to topics within a page.

Here’s an example result to a search for “estimated taxes”. Notice the three snippet links (I have circled on of them):

Here’s why this matters to business owners who manage their own websites: now users won’t have to waste time scrolling through long pages that cover multiple topics to find the info they want. Usually when a user does a search, they have a pretty narrow interest. These links will help them get to what the want to read much more easily. That’s powerful because the if your site is the one that answers the need of a potential customer, you gain instant credibility. Because you gave that person what they wanted, they are more apt to check out what else is on your site.

Google recommends you do the following to increase the chances of these links appearing in searches that include your site:

1. Make sure that pages on your website that are long and cover multiple topics are well organized. Break them up into clearly divided, logical sections with headers.

2. Use an anchor for each section. Make sure that the anchor doesn’t have a generic name (like “anchor1″ for example. To be safe, use the same name as the section.

3. Include a table of contents at the top of the page. The new in-snippet links only appear for relevant queries, so you won’t see it on the results all the time — only when we think that a link to a section would be highly useful for a particular query.

One last thing: snippet links won’t appear on every single search result. You will only see them when Google deems a relevant relationship between the link and the search query.

So, if you have pages that could benefit from these new snippet links, try those three steps above. You’ll probably be a first-mover in your industry since Google only recently announced this feature. That could result in even more traffic because your site will be the only one with such super-relevant results. Be sure to monitor search results for relevant keywords to see when and how your new links appear.

Let me know your results!