Archive for June, 2009

Google’s Wonder Wheel – Increase Web Usability

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

We at Search Circus, love images and graphics depicting Web usability tools, and Google’s Wonder Wheel is a really cool feature if you need more search term ideas.

Type any search term in Google, let’s use Search Engine Marketing, for an example. At the top of the search results, in blue, is “Show Options.” Click on this and a menu appears on the left-hand side of the screen. Are you thinking, “Looks like Bing”? Now click on “Wonder Wheel” under Standard View. What do you get? A diagram I have seen so many times in schools across the country, a graphic organizer. Yeah, we thought it was pretty awesome too.

Search Engine Marketing Wonder Wheel

Try Googling your name as well, what other terms are linked to your name? Hopefully ones that will lead visitors to your company.

Ok, it’s a cool graphic that also brings up additional search results on the right, which match those additional keywords, but what is the Web usability? Google’s Wonder Wheel is a great way to find additional keywords for your Website, or if you need ideas to write blogs, articles, corporate newsletters and more. Send a Twitter to your followers about one of the search terms to increase Web usability among social network searches, heck, you can put a hashtag (#) next to the term and see how many people talk about it as well.

Stuck on finding a synonym? Try the Wonder Wheel! Want to know which words your competitors are associated with? Try the Wonder Wheel. Google still has its advantages as a super search engine.

If you’re a curious tech geek, or just curious about other features on this menu, try clicking “Timeline.” You’ll get another bar graph of sorts that tracks the history of the search term. See below for “Search Engine Marketing.” As you can see, the earliest recorded term was in 2004 and the associated results are also visible.

Search Engine Marketing Timeline

Search Engine Marketing Timeline

Want to find images for your search term, click on “Images from the page.” A return of all the images related to the search term which are found on the page. Here’s one I found, great circle diagram, which also offers additional buzz words if I wanted to search more on this topic.

SEO Chart for Web Usability

SEO Chart for Web Usability

Try it, have fun with these Web usability tools and see where it leads you! Need more tips about Web usability? Call the certified experts at SearchCircus.com.

Link Building via Social Media

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

3598356119_bd22769c3e_oOur guide to using traditional link building techniques on social media sites and on social networks is now live. This was a pretty fun guide to write, and we think that most Webmasters will find that using link building to drive traffic to their site will be one of the most fun SEO activities yet. You can check it out here.

Getting More Website Traffic with a Quality Site Structure

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

more website traffic

more website traffic

Last week we discussed how to create content that gets more Website traffic. The key was to create—as our visual aid from Flicker helpfully pointed out—valuable original content for more Website traffic. That’s important to getting attention and getting visitors amidst all the noise that exists in our online world.

But that’s only half of the story to gaining more Website traffic. A well-structured site is important to both human eyes and search engine crawlers—those programs that Google and Yahoo employ to evaluate and glean information from all Websites.

So what does good structure that gets more Website traffic entail? It means that your Website is built in a way that both human beings and search engine crawlers can understand. The good news is that what’s usually good for human comprehension is good for crawler comprehension. That means setting up Website categories that are easy to understand is crucial to getting more Website traffic.

The key to more Website traffic is to create a Website that begins with very general categories and logically progresses into coherent subcategories. It’s also important to allow your customers to quickly jump to the specific categories they’re looking for. Here are the three most important steps to getting more Website traffic.

  1. Assess all your products and divide them into easy-to-understand groups. This will depend on the product you’re selling. But you should be able to divide your inventory into at least three or four categories.
  2. Organize your products into each category. Does everything fit into a group? If not, then you may have to reconsider your initial categorizing. The point is to create categories for products that will make it easy for customers to find your products.
  3. Make it easy to jump around. Your customers—and the search engines—should be able to quickly jump from individual products back to the home page. Easy navigation is important to search engine rankings and to customers.

While crucial, those steps really just scratch the surface to getting more Website traffic with efficient site structure. There are many other ways to tweak and enhance your Website for both users and search engines. If you have any questions about quality site structure, please send us an email.