Month: September 2014

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How to get more clicks from Google SERPs

A click here interaction on a laptop screen

Simple-to-understand URLs will attract more traffic to your site

Great SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can get your site ranked on the first page of Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). But the next step is up to you – or your webmaster – and it’s critical to getting more visitors to click through to your site. Here, Google explains how to achieve user-friendly URLs for better marketing of your site.

You must try to create simple, descriptive categories and file names for all documents on your website. That not only helps you organize your site better, but it also leads to better search engine crawling of your site’s documents. Also, it can create easier, “friendlier” URLs for those that want to link to your content. Visitors may be intimidated by extremely long and cryptic URLs that contain few recognizable words. They don’t lend themselves to effective marketing.

Unfriendly URLs – A Marketing Faux Pas

URLs like (1) can be confusing and unfriendly. Users would have a hard time reciting the URL from memory or creating a link to it. Also, users may believe that a portion of the URL is unnecessary, especially if the URL shows many unrecognizable parameters. They might leave off a part, thus breaking the link.

With effective marketing, users might link to your page using the URL of that page as the anchor text. If your URL contains relevant words, this provides users and search engines with more user-friendly information about the page than an ID or oddly named parameter would (2).

Google SERP Meta Data 1URLs returned in Google search contain good marketing keywords

Lastly, remember that the URL to a document is displayed as part of a search result in Google, below the document’s title and snippet. Like the title and snippet, words in the URL on the search result appear in bold if they appear in the user’s query (3). Example (2) shows a URL on the domain for a page containing an article about the rarest baseball cards. Keywords in the URL will appeal to a search user more than a random ID number like “www. brandonsbaseballcards.com/article/102125/”.

 

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Google SERP Meta Data 2

Rewriting your URLs

Google is good at crawling all types of URL structures, even if they’re quite complex, but spending the time to make your URLs as simple as possible for both users and search engines can help.

Some webmasters try to achieve this by rewriting their dynamic URLs to static ones; while Google is fine with this, we’d like to note that this is an advanced procedure and if done incorrectly, could cause crawling issues with your site.

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.URL Structure

To learn even more about good URL structure, we recommend the Webmaster Help Center page on creating Google-friendly URLs.

Image summary:

Simple-to-understand URLs in Google SERPs will convey content information easily

(1) A URL to a page on our baseball card site that a user might have a hard time with.

(2) The highlighted words above could inform a user or search engine what the target page is about before following the link.

URLs are displayed in Google SERPs

(3) A user performs the query [baseball cards]. Our homepage appears as a result, with the URL listed under the title and snippet.

 

Have you noticed how your site’s page URLs appear in Google search results?

For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Marketing and Social Media.

Content thanks to Google for their Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide available FREE.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

Lisa Chapman helps company leaders define, plan and achieve their goals – both online and offline. After 25+ years as an entrepreneur, she is now a business and marketing consultant, business planning consultant and social media consultant. Online, she works with clients to establish and enhance their brand, attract their Target Audience, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert them into Buyers. You can reach her via email: Lisa (at) LisaChapman (dot) com. Her book, The WebPowered Entrepreneur – A Step-by-Step Guide is available at:

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Tips For Organizing Priorities

A priority list on a note

We have mentioned previously how to communicate priorities, but how do Technical Writers organize their own priorities? Prioritizing, listing items from the most important to the least important, can be a daunting task. Sometimes you can recognize and know right away what the priority is and sometimes not. When it comes to work priorities, how do we organize it? We can learn what needs to be done first from prior meetings and we can also consider other items such as the following:

  • Check out your project plan(s); use it as your guideline. See where you currently stand with the noted tasks. If a new project is assigned, see how and where you can make changes to meet new goals or priorities. Make sure you know whether or not you can really fit it into your schedule. Examine all the timelines and resources as well.
  • Make sure you have all the correct schedules for resources and availability. Without this information, you will not be able to complete a task.
  • Be aware of your company goals. Knowing the direction the company is moving towards can at times help you set your priorities.
  • Make a list. You can break the list down into different categories followed by various project phases or stages to see a clearer picture.
  • Divide the priority list by drawing a line and setting the higher priorities above the line. Sort these. Depending on what works the best for you, complete the simplest to the most difficult task or vice versa.
  • Have a meeting and find out what is the most important task to accomplish within each phase of a project.
  • Create a mapping with the different tasks to see how priority outcomes would be reached.
  • Set up a hierarchy to see which goals need to be reached first.

What do you do when you have competing priorities for deliverables and resources?

  • The first item on the agenda is a meeting of all parties involved and follow suggestions from the previous article on communicating priorities in order to let all involved know what is on your agenda.
  • Create phases of a deliverable so that you have all the resources you need to complete development of all priorities. Once phases are assigned, make sure everyone has ownership of what they have to do.
  • Try to make use of any resources you have to help.
  • Set up a matrix of roles and responsibilities and ensure everyone involved is aware of its existence so that no resources can be suddenly taken away.

Finally,

  • Stay on top of the priorities to make sure no changes occur.
  • Stay informed as to what else is happening within the organization so that you stay ahead of the game and can make adjustments quickly without missing the delivery date. Stay in control.
  • Set up a calendar for yourself and for others to see.
  • Be assertive about no more changes if re-prioritizing seems to be in the future.

Once your priority listing is completed, document the process you followed and make it reusable. Do not assume anything. Make sure you have all the facts and figures when setting priorities.

What process have you used to set up or organize priorities?

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Home Depot Latest Data Breach Victim?

data-breach-unsecured-warning-sign-concept

Strong statement to kick things off, but it was missing something

Home Depot may be joining the ranks of Target, P.F. Changs, and many others after announcing that it is looking into “unusual activity” involves the security of its data. While we give them due credit for not sitting mum on the topic, and coming off as very confident in their statement, as happens so often this one was missing a critical ingredient – compassion.

Here’s what the retailer told Krebs on Security, the site that broke the story:

“I can confirm we are looking into some unusual activity and we are working with our banking partners and law enforcement to investigate,” Drake said, reading from a prepared statement. “Protecting our customers’ information is something we take extremely seriously, and we are aggressively gathering facts at this point while working to protect customers. If we confirm that a breach has a occurred, we will make sure customers are notified immediately. Right now, for security reasons, it would be inappropriate for us to speculate further – but we will provide further information as soon as possible.”

Effective crisis communications is very much about putting yourself in the audience’s shoes, thinking “what would I want to hear in this situation?” Besides the obvious – what’s happening and what are you doing about it – people want to know that you care, and you do that by showing compassion. This isn’t a total flop for Home Depot, but when the trust of your stakeholders is on the line isn’t it important to ensure your messaging is as effective as possible?

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

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Checklists – A Valuable Tool for the Nonprofit – Part II

Checklists for nonprofit organization

In January 2009, a US Airways jet taking off from LaGuardia airport jet hit a flock of geese 3 minutes after takeoff and immediately lost power in all engines.

With two minutes of altitude left, Captain Sully and his crew reached for their checklists dealing with loss of engine power and emergency landings; and, in what is now known as the “Miracle on the Hudson,” safely executed an emergency “landing” on the Hudson River.

This is a great example of bravery, coolness under pressure, flawless execution, maybe divine intervention (I’ll leave that up to you), and a least a little good luck. It is also an outstanding example of preparedness.

Where it’s obvious that the crew was prepared, the question here is, “What does all that have to do with your non-profit?”

Three weeks ago, I introduced the idea of checklists as an extremely valuable tool that can be used for your non-profit’s Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) fundraising effort.

Checklists are valuable, in and of themselves, and in certain occupations – flying, medicine, scuba diving, they can be, literally, life-saving….

In other arenas, such as the building industry, well designed checklists and processes can save millions of dollars, by avoiding mistakes before they happen.

As Dr. Gawande explained: “…the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely or reliably.”

So what are the benefits to a non-profit of using checklists?

There are three key points that I want to share with you, two directly from the book, and my analysis of what industry is most similar to the non-profit industry.

The first consideration is that the act of preparing the checklists is as important as the checklists themselves. (A first draft can be done by an experienced member of your CFC action team, it can be done by an experienced staffer, or it can be a great learning/training assignment for someone new to your non-profit or to your team.)

Second, no checklist starts out being perfect. They must all be tested and revised based on experience and actual use.

Third, one of the most valuable techniques available is one used by the building industry, where “double checklists” are now an industry standard. For every project there are two checklists, with the first being the actual Project Checklist, and the second is the Communications Checklist.

As the project steps are completed or problems are noticed and reported, the second checklist specifies what must be communicated to what other involved parties. In the building trades, there are sixteen different types of contractors, plus inspectors, financial reporting requirements, etc. … and everyone must know the current (and pending) status of all elements of the project.

While it may sound surprising at first, I think that the non-profit world is very similar to the construction industry because of the number and variety of different people working within a non-profit: full- and part-time paid staff, volunteers, and members of the board of directors.

In most NPOs, there are three requirements for every task: First, knowing what the task is … that it exists. Second, performing the task. Third, communicating the task’s successful completion to someone. While the “someone” varies, there is almost always a required communication in addition to the task.

In my October 1st posting, I’ll discuss the specific areas for which your CFC Action team should develop needed checklists.

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Next Week, another Two-Fer:
A piece on starting an effective Bequest Program, and
A piece on the Importance and Timing of the “Thank You.”
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During his 25-year career in the Federal sector,
Bill Huddleston, The CFC Coach,
served in many CFC roles. If you want to participate in the Combined Federal
Campaign, maximize your nonprofit’s CFC revenues, or just ask a few questions,
contact Bill Huddleston
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Have you seen
The Fundraising Series of ebooks?
They’re easy to read, to the point, and inexpensive ($1.99 – $4.99)
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If you would like to comment/expand on the above piece, or would just like to offer your thoughts on the subject of this posting, we encourage you to “Leave a Reply.”