We are fulfilling this need with our new audit that we have been offering to our clients from the beginning of year 2010. We named it Web Presence Audit (the working title had been Web Visibility Audit, but this nice word was used by our Slovak competition). New audit tries to go even further in analyzing the overall visibility of client on the web, i.e. it also covers social networks, local search results, reputation management basics or synergies between paid presentation in the search engines (PPC) and optimization.

We decided to share our Effective Web Audit, which is from larger part still up-to-date, with everyone. It could serve as basis for discussion, comparing the optimization processes or maybe it will inspire someone during work on their web site.

Effective Web Audit evaluates your web site in six main parts:

1. (X)HTML and CSS code – do you have well structured and valid code? What kind of layout are you using? What about your CSS and Javascript? Do you have well titled pages and use META information?
2. URL addresses structure – do you use friendly URLs? Is your problem duplicate content?
3. Technical issues – is your web site indexed by search engines? Are pages cached and links working? What does your robots.txt file say?
4. Statistics - do you know your traffic? Do you use Google Webmaster Tools? What are your keywords and their positions? What your backlinks profile looks like?
5. Accessibility - is your web site shown properly in any browser? How the text change impacts your web site? Do text links clearly stand out? How fast does your web site load?
6. Usability - is your logo positioned properly? Is web site navigation clear? Does user know what page he is on? Do you offer a sitemap? How are your links targeted? Are they well described? Is there meaningful content on your web site? Does your error (page not found) page help or scare people away? Does overall look and feel of your web site complement to website goals?

To download (licensed under Creative Commons Attribution cc by license):

• Effective Web Audit – PDF format

ODT or DOC formats available on request.

We believe that Effective Web Audit will help you with marketing of your web site. If you require help or advice of professionals in the internet marketing, contact us.

First day at Pizza SEO was notable for all book recommendations I received.  After acquainted with my colleagues, I jumped right into work. I received some training and was told what books I should read. I was shocked by the amount of recommended reading, but all books look interesting.

In any company a new guy must have his first training and know the working processes of the company. I learned what the business of Pizza SEO is, what things they do. The best way to learn is to study the last work cases. Of course, they also gave me further papers to study processes and techniques. And of course I was reading and searching for information about SEO on the internet.

The best time of a day for me was a meeting with a client. We were chatting about plans and strategy at one cafe. A client was open-minded and accepted some of my proposals.

And at last, one small comment on the first day. The office would look better, if we hanged some nice and colorful photo on the wall.

Main screen / New tweet textbox

Display the whole box on click, not on key-down.
Reasoning: The size of box is seen as limiting for first-time users of Choqok. Also it is small (one line
textbox), compared to the sizes of other Twitter clients.

Main screen / Posting new status

I would recommend adding traditional icon showing some kind of network activity (circle with small dot going around or similar) to be layered over the tweet textbox (some kind of opacity should be added, so it partly hides the textbox) on posting.
Reasoning: No dynamic indication of message posting occurs. If larger image is attached to the tweet and tweet posted, only Statusbar (if enabled) indicates messages is being posted.

Main screen / Flow of tweets

Tweet on mouseover
I would go for having only two larger icons RE: and RT side by side and moving Favourite “star” to the top right of the tweet.
Reasoning: Icons (Reply etc.) look very small and blurred (specially on higher resolutions).

Flow of tweets / Retweet icon

I would recommend changing it possibly to some kind of classic or double arrow directed to the right.
Reasoning: RT icon looks like a recycling, which is usually related to the delete/erase action.

New tweets count in parentheses

Hide new tweets count on restoring Choqok (or maximizing it), not on minimizing.
Reasoning: New tweets count in the parentheses is hidden only when Choqok is minimized. Users should
not be forced to minimize Choquok (or press CTRL+R) to stop it from displaying number of new tweets, replies or direct messages.

related: Settings

Have an option to “Include replies in Home”.
Have an option to “Include direct messages in Home”.
Have an option to “Merge Inbox and Outbox into Dms”.
Reasoning: Hiding unnecessary tabs (if user chooses so) saves space and make Choqok look cleaner and simple.

related: Tabs

These actions are related to the settings as described above.
In case “Include replies in Home” option in Settings is checked, delete this tab as it would be redundant.
In case “Include direct messages in Home” option in Settings is checked, delete these tabs as they would be redundant.
In case “Merge Inbox and Outbox into DMs” option in Settings is checked, display only one tab “DMs” (alternatively Directs” or “Direct messages”.

Merging direct messages’ Inbox and Outbox

I recommend Inbox and Outbox tabs to be merged.
Reasoning: Merging enables user to follow up easier on the mutual communication. Alternatively, threading could be introduced, with last message shown as the larger one with other DMs belonging to the same conversation moved to the right under the latest DM from/to the same person. Left margin should be set to some value to put older DMs under the new one.

Main screen / Statusbar

Status bar should be disabled by default.
Reasoning: Statusbar does not add any informational value to the tweet list (flow of tweets) or when
browsing menu. Last update time could be optionally displayed next to “You and your friends” text in the
parentheses, e.g. (5m ago, no new tweets), (10m ago, 5 new tweets). A tooltip could be displayed on
mouseover with additional information: “Last updated 5m ago. 5 new tweets, 2 replies, 3 DMs”.

Download the full report

You can download the full report in PDF format (143 KBs). The report contains recommendations on usability improvements to Choqok Twitter client as well as more information on Pizza SEO and what we do.

Some of his tips include unplugging mouse and using only keyboard to work with the web, using only a software keyboard, turning off the monitor and navigating by screen reader only, sitting far away from the screen or decreasing brightness of the screen.

His tips are well thought and if more developers and designers followed them, it would make websites better in general.

Newspapers will become a lucrative niche for SEO. There are signs of print newspaper slowly fading away – two Detroit daily papers are refocusing on digital, as the old model had become “unsustainable”. Circulation and advertising revenues are falling for newspapers around the world.

People are reading digital media much more and news is reported often up to the minute (e.g. Twitter journalism, Qik, Google News) rather than with a day’s lag. Since newspapers are under pressure to build their online presence, around the world (with the partial exception of Belgium) they are trying to optimise the content to appear better in search engines.

SEOs noticed when New York Times put its SEO strategy in place. It made its archives accessible (with a few old school SEO “tricks”) to build traffic and incease ad revenue.

There has also been talk of reporters getting trained in basic SEO tactics regarding usage of keywords. The Times Online editor-in-chief said search and SEO were completely interwoven – reporters learned SEO techniques and monitored site searches to better gauge reader interest. Sub editors, who usually make up catchy headlines, are being pushed out by SEO requirements.

Respected Dutch SEO Joost de Valk put forward his ideas for newspaper SEO based on work he did for Dutch papers: fix templates (tags, code) and URLs (include keywords, as well as some numbers with at least three digits to meet Google News requirements) and a bunch of other useful tips.

At Pizza SEO we had the privilege of working with SME Online in 2006, the online edition of one of Slovakia’s main broadsheets. They have been lauded as some of the most innovative online newspapers in Europe and had introduced blogging into the press. We have also worked with Euractiv, a news server on EU affairs both in Slovakia and in Brussels.

Media clients are usually refreshing in that they do not have a shortage of content, which many other clients suffer from. Rather they have an abundance and there are numerous challenges in presenting the rich content to visitors in a usable and accessible format.

Lookout for more and more traditional media outlets around you looking for SEO staff and consultants. There are likely to be opportunities for SEOs both in-house and outsourced in many geographic an linguistic news markets.

After we had agreed to start one of Slovakia’s first SEO consultancies in the beginning of 2006, we had thought long and hard about a good name – one that would work both in our home market and leave room for international work. We thought the name should contain SEO as it stands for the search engine optimization, our core area of work. Trying different phrases and finding no agreement between the four founders even after multiple rounds of beer, I finally said in exasperation: “We might as well call it Pizza SEO, huh?” Everybody was surprised for a moment, but then we realized we had stumbled upon a winner. After all, everybody likes Pizza…

So there it was and it became official – we are Pizza SEO.

However, it does not mean that searchability, accessibility and usability issues regarding Flash websites have been resolved. Flash is an important tool and has a role in web presentations but should rarely be the format of choice for entire websites.

Indexing Flash better does not mean indexing Flash well. By design there is very little text within a Flash site for the search engines to read. Moreover, you have little control over how the website will appear in the SERPs (and often, it won’t be pretty).

There is no jumping inside a Flash movie. Google reading more into Flash does not mean it can overcome one of its main usability drawbacks – the fact that most flash websites are on a single URL or have a limited URL structure. You cannot link to a specific point within a Flash site. So even if Google knows that somewhere within your site there is something a user wants to see, it has no way of sending her there.

Many usability conscious SEOs are worried that news on better indexing of Flash sites devalues their oft used argument – it is easier to convince someone to avoid Flash if you can threaten very poor search engine visibility. However, most companies with pure Flash websites are simply victims of looks-obsessed graphic designers who don’t understand user experience. All the arguments against Flash abuse still hold: hard to optimize for search engines, poor accessibility (think rich managers on mobile devices if sight-impaired users aren’t good enough), poor user experience (no back button, no way of knowing how to interact with many sites).

This does not mean there is no role for Flash to play. If used correctly (most of the time within a website rather than instead of a website) Flash can make for great user experience (Future NOW’s Jeff Sexton provides great examples) . So next time your advertising agency or web designer tells you to go Flash make sure they understand its limits.

Banks often try to minimize client visits at branches through prices set in favor of using online services. For active clients internet banking is one of the key channels for banking transactions. Its usability and the overall quality of user experience are therefore vital.

According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, 15% of the Slovak population used Internet banking in 2007 – a higher share than in the neighboring countries. These clients are lucrative for the banks, since Internet is accessed disproportionately not only by the young but also by people with higher socio-economic status.

In 2007 Pizza SEO began working on rating Internet banking applications of Slovak banks. Our methodology is based on the so-called user personas technique – we created three fictitious but representative users who attempted to complete specific tasks in the various Internet banking systems.

As a result we defined 60 indicators used to test applications of Slovak banks. The list of indicators along with our resulting rankings of usability of Slovak Internet banking applications will be published at the end of this exercise.

Our check-list focused on two aspects of usability: efficiency and errors since these were the easiest to measure objectively. We evaluated to what extent the functions we identified as necessary can be easily accessed by a regular user and whether the application can withstand user errors (ability to enter data in varying formats, etc.). For selected tasks we tracked the so-called click distance (number of mouse clicks required to complete task). We based our methodology on several international research reports on the importance of individual functions and features of Internet banking applications.

Pizza SEO is financing this test – we rejected the option of being supported by banks themselves, to avoid conflict of interest. This is one of the reasons why the ranking has been so long in the making.
However, while testing each application our consultants have come across a variety of interesting aspects, pleasant and unpleasant surprises. We are therefore publishing a brief videocast (in Slovak) on each of the banks. Some of our findings may be of interest to developers of online banking applications but many are relevant to other types of applications and will therefore be of interest to a broader audience.

We released the first videocast on Komercni Banka on 7th May 2008 on our Slovak blog, several others have followed and we will release several every month. The ranking table of all banks will come at the end and will be provided in Slovak and English. We look forward to your comments and experiences with Internet banking in Slovakia and in general.

In addition to Slovak, OpenPhrases.com offers English, German and Russian. I have little to say on the latter two versions as we rarely if ever get to use them. On the other hand, we often get to use the English version both in our client work and the work we do on our own projects (to supplement, rather than replace other tools, as I explain below).

Unlike with Slovak, this is where OpenPhrases.com enters into a competitive arena with several heavy weight competitors. How does it stack up? Where does it fit in a search marketer’s tool box?

Keyword Analysis

Keyword analysis is bread and butter of any search marketing effort – both on the organic search optimization front and for paid search advertising. In performing keyword analysis SEOs usually look to:
1. Gather keywords and phrases to use in organic optimization and paid ads in search engines,
2. Assess importance of words and phrases (absolute and relative) in terms of search volume,
3. Estimate competitiveness for a given word in organic or paid search.

There are a number of tools usable for simply gathering keywords (e.g. to create a list of words for a PPC campaign) – you can mine logs, use suggestions from search engines or even a simple thesaurus. You can easily load tonnes of keywords in a pay-per-click campaign and see if they receive any searches.

Competitiveness of search phrases can be estimated using Google itself (popular method simply looks at the number of results for the given phrase, although this is only a proxy for competitiveness at the top of the SERPs). Tools within online advertising systems give an indication of competition in paid search.

There are only a few tools to look at search volumes and assess the absolute and relative search frequency of various phrases (especially since the highly popular Overture Inventory Tool went dead in December 2007). Three major tools are used: Keyword Discovery, Wordtracker and Wordze. For a serious search marketer these tools are a de rigeur regardless of their prices – some marketers swear by one of them but many use several to cross verify the info they get.

Having said that these tools can actually be quite costly – monthly subscriptions run from about $45 (Wordze) to $69 (Keyword Discovery). Lots of people do subscribe and there is obviously value to each one of them (see Copyblogger for a great review).

But OpenPhrases.com is completely free (“at least for some time” according to the creators’ blog). Therefore I think it only makes sense to compare it with other free tools or free versions of paid tools.

So I ran OpenPhrases.com head-to-head with the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, Free Search Term Suggestion Tool by KeywordDiscovery.com and the Free Keyword Suggestion Tool on Wordtracker. I chose the search for ‘real estate’ as one I expected to have reasonable search volumes. I also played around with other searches (’shirt’, ‘Bratislava’, ’sex’) but my impressions were very similar.

For Google I turned the Synonyms option off, for Wordtracker I left the default Remove offensive (results) option selected and for Open Phrases I unchecked Synonyms but left Stemming on.

‘Real estate’

For real estate Google’s results looked very reasonable (although Google does not give any specific numbers, just green bars and you can therefore only see the order by volume). ‘Real estate’ as a phrase appeared first, followed by ‘real estate listings’ and ‘commercial real estate’. The first geographically specific phrase and the only one in the top 10 appeared in the seventh position – it was ‘florida real estate’. Overall, the results looked quite US-centric.

The Keyword Discovery tool also showed ‘real estate’ in the top position, with an overwhelming 431,375 searches (to 23,033 for second-ranked ‘Las Vegas real estate’). The other geographic phrase in the top 10 was again ‘florida real estate’ in the 8th position. Several real estate agents (prudential, century 21) also showed. All in all the first 100 results (showed for free) appeared pretty sensible, too.

Wordtracker started off with ‘Marbella real estate’ and seven out of the first 10 searches were geo-specific (places like Portland, franklin tn, fort myers). ‘Real estate’ itself came sixth. Interestingly, search volume on Marbella was reported at 23,526 compared with 18,504 for real estate itself.

Results returned by Open Phrases were somewhat suspect: ‘brava costa estate real’ came first with 568 searches (about 300 of them on a single day according to the detailed info I got when I clicked on [DETAILS] next to the phrase, which brings up a cool 92-day histogram) followed by ‘califormia real estate ray and peggy pierce’ with 310 searches. All the other top 10 searches were also geo-specific, ‘real estate’ on its own appeared nowhere in the top 50.

Digging into the results gave some further clues on their quality: clicking on the third placed ‘crete estate real’ with 253 searches showed there were also five for ‘real estate crete’ indicating these could be drawn from distinct data sources (one that preserves the order of words and one that does not). Clicking on ‘real estate agents’ showed multiple variations with the word kanpur: ‘real estate agents at kanpur’, ‘in kanpur’ and ‘at kanpur.’.

Fun with keyword analysis?

OpenPhrases.com shows promise – nice interface with some great features such as the three-month search history, limiting searches by phrase length or frequency or looking for synonyms (as a side note, what I found quite annoying was the auto-suggest feature which showed phrases as I typed – when I hit enter using Firefox, the tool searched for the top auto-suggested phrase and not the on I had typed in).

At the moment, however, it lacks a database of sufficient quality to be a reliable source for keyword analysis. This is not surprising – finding usable and representative search data to play with is not easy in a world 80% dominated by one search engine. Say the creators: “Current database contains more than 45.000.000 unique keywords (unique search queries) and more than 500.000.000 search queries. We got them from world-wide used search engines, if you ask which, sorry, we keep this information secret.”

As a free tool OpenPhrases.com is great for individual marketers or amateur SEOs to supplement the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and free Wordtracker – i.e. it is great, as its tagline says, “…when keyword analysis is fun” (though maybe not when it is supposed to be serious work). It can provide extra info to anyone who does not need or cannot afford to pay for full access to one (or several) of the heavy duty tools.

If and when the creators get their hands on a more extensive search data feed and sort out minor usability and data parsing niggles, the Open Phrases tool with its friendly interface can become very useful.

Not much, except for a post by Michael Martinez at Seo Theory blog. I know, Michael meant optimizing for “seo”, “pizza” and “Britney Spears” separately, but I guess optimizing for those three terms together could bring some SEO-targetted traffic as well (readers of Michael’s blog searching for these three phrases, welcome!).

Since we already rank in top spots for phrases such as our company name – Pizza SEO, SEO Pizza and other related keywords, it shouldn’t be much harder to rank well for Britney Spears in connection with Pizza SEO.

DISCLAIMER: We do not have ANY other connection with Britney Spears!