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Background

ViewState is a hidden form field used by Microsoft’s ASP.Net to maintain the state of web controls used to build a page.

In simple terms ViewState remembers if a web control has been modified by a user. This information can then be passed back to the web server when their browser requests another webpage or during a post back request.

So for example ViewState might be used to remember a user’s vote on a Poll web control.

Problem

By default ASP.NET records ViewState data for every web control on a page. Even content that cant be modified and which is essentially “stateless”.

An RSS web control used to display a list of RSS powered links would be one such example.

A page built using multiple controls can often cause the ViewState field to become very large in size.

Issues for SEO

It is the size (in Kb’s) that is the only concern for SEO.

A page which is recording ViewState data for each web control can easily result in a ViewState field of 50-100k. This will greatly increase the size of the overall HTML document file.

Although I believe the concerns raised by some to be unfounded:

1. Search Engine crawlers only read the first 100k of a webpage
2. Content to code ratio is diluted by a large ViewState field

My experience has shown that Search Engines (especially Google) are increasingly look at site performance and page load times as a significant factor in website rankings.

If all links and content are equal what is better for a user; a fast loading site or a poorly performing one?

Solutions

Although it possible to move the ViewState to the bottom of page this doesn’t reduce the page size.

For that prevention is better than cure and disabling ViewState for unnecessarily Web controls is one of the ways to put your pages on a diet and thus reduce the page download time.

Finding ViewState

The ViewState can easily be seen by clicking “view source” on any webpage that is built using ASP.Net.

Farmers Weekly is one such example.

ViewState plug-in for Firefox

There are a number of plug ins available for Firefox. 2 of the best include:

1. ViewState Size which displays the size in kB of webpage using ASP.Net’s ViewState in the status bar of Firefox
2. ViewState peeker which can decode and display what is being recorded within the ViewState.

Who else saw Google’s “This site may harm your computer” warning on Saturday 31st Jan 2009 at around 2pm GMT time???

I sure did, it appeared for every search I completed using Google UK (with World Wide results); the default search engine for nearly 85% of the UK population (Hitwise data Dec 08).

View the screen grab of SERPs and the Malware Warning displayed to all users who clicked on a link:

It appeared that Google had updated their Security warning and raised the settings a little too high! This release was quickly rolled back and normal Google service quickly resumed with the whole episode lasting no more than a couple of hours.

But take a look at the screen grabs below. The impact of Google’s heightened security warning has had a clear impact on both EGpropertylink.com and Flightglobal.com’s Organic search visits.

This comes as a stark warning to those sites which rely on Google as their major source of traffic acquisition. If Google “stops liking you” or Google has a prolonged incident as described above then that could prove very costly indeed.

All your eggs in one basket anyone?!

<meta xmlns="http://pipes.yahoo.com" name="pipes" content="noprocess" />

Yahoo Pipes is a service with which a user can process any freely available RSS or XML feed. They may blend, mash up or splice multiple RSS feeds together as well as filter and process them.

Coupled up with auto blogging tool Literatory.com makes clever use of the custom filter provide by Yahoo Pipes. Taking an RSS feed of Wikipedia edit comments it filters them for 4 letter obsanities. Its worth a look to see how irate some “community” users can get!

To avoid your content being used by Yahoo pipes you may wish to add the above “noprocess” meta statement to your XML feed.

*Note This is not a full prove solution. As with all freely available content, an RSS feed will always be open to misuse.

Notice the Meta no Yahoo Pipes statement in situ below. Just before the <item> tag.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	>

<channel>
	<title>searchideas.co.uk</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.searchideas.co.uk/blog/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.searchideas.co.uk/blog</link>
	<description>Search Ideas is a blog all about SEO, PPC and Online happenings...</description>
	<pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:00:30 +0000</pubDate>

	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5</generator>
	<language>en</language>      

         <meta xmlns="http://pipes.yahoo.com" name="pipes" content="noprocess" />

         <item>
	...
	</item>

</channel>
</rss>

Alternatively you may wish to block or noindex your RSS/XML feed from appearing within the SERP’s

Everyone  has their own to approach Keyword Research and i thought i would offer my own.

Keyword Research is arguably the most basic skill a Search Marketer must posses. Clear, well thought out Keyword research is usually conducted as part of building and maintaining a website’s Keyword Footprint by highlighting the keywords and phrases that could be used as the basis of a content creation plan.

Firstly its a good idea to be clear as to your over all objectives. Why are you conducting the keyword research? Is your website generating the bulk of its revenue through Ad placements and therefore are you interested in building absolute traffic numbers? Or does your website provide a premium service, goods, or leads to a ecommerce site? If so you’ll likely be more interested in finding those keywords that convert…

PART 1: Keyword Research for Conversion

Keyword Research for conversion is all about finding the keywords that your potential customers are typing into their search engines. Finding the keywords or phrases that convert at the highest rates can be tricky as many factors can persuade or put off a potential customer. It is therefore important to appreciate how those on-page variables will affect how your users will interact with your website. Clear “Calls to action”, page design and usability especially on entry (landing) pages all play their part.

Finding keywords that convert

1. Consult your Website analytics

Make sure your conversion points have been set up. Conversion points are those business goals you intended a user to complete. Usually:

Purchase or sign up

Lead - trail request/Request for information

Then create a segment of “converting users” (Visits to your site that went on to complete a conversion). Users of Google Analytics will find a “Visits with conversions” segment already set up!

All of those acquisition keywords listed within the the “Visits with Conversions” segment were used to find your site and then convert.

These keywords should be your starting point for optimising the content that already ranks for that particular keyword term.

Optimising the content may mean improvements to where the page ranks within the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages) or improvements to on-page variables (conversion optimisation) as discussed above.

To broaden the depth of converting keywords

2. Conduct PPC

Obviously your Analytics package will only display the converting keywords used to find your site if your site already ranks for that term.

Using PPC you can widen your over all keyword footprint in a relatively short time period.

Starting with the converting terms in your analytics package will allow you to build out search phrases and keywords using a keyword research tool such as Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery or Google Adwords keyword tool. Google Adwords is a completely free service and one that i find provides the most useful results.

Once your built up your themed ad groups be sure to write a concise, descriptive and persuasive ad that links to a highly relevant page on the site, in most cases this will not be the homepage.

Run the campaign for a minimum of 3 months, a longer time period will help to suppress biases found around holiday periods and other date specific events (Halloween, Valentines day, Mothers day etc).

A keyword to be used in future SEO content creation plans are those not* with the greatest CTR (Click through rate), Impressions or the lowest CPC (cost per click) but those that actually convert at the highest levels.

Conversion rates for PPC keywords can be found by again looking at the “Visits with conversion” segment and then filtering those keywords to those that came from “Paid Search”.

*Again be aware If you PPC campaigns drives a lot of non converting traffic to your site, it would be advisable to investigate how best these pages can be optimised to encourage a user to complete the desired goal before embarking upon content creation.

Build and Optimising your content

Once you have found the desired converting keywords you must then use them to begin to build a content creation and optimisation strategy.

SERPs are often referred to simply as Search Results.

SERPs generally contain either Organic (Non paid) links,  Paid (Sponsored) links or both.

Most modern search engines such as Google, Yahoo, ASK and Microsoft Live have Search Engine Result Pages that contain both Organic and Sponsored links.

AltaVista used to contain just Organic listings while Goto.com (now Overture) contained only paid listings or Search results.

Example of a Search Engine Result Page

Has Google News listed you publication with the wrong location?

The red box in the screen grab below show’s “Flight International” listed as the publication name to the top News story.  Flight International was renamed to Flightglobal in 2007 with the Flightinternational.com domain permanently (301) redirected to  Flightglobal.com. However Google News still lists the out dated name:

How to Update:

To update Google News with a new publication name simply fill in the “update the name of my site” on Google’s Help page.

Use this page to update or modify the location of your site or publication. An example location is highlighted by the green box in the screen grab.

What Information does Google News require?

Just your name, the name of your site/publication, the new name or location and your email address.

Although not necessary i would advise using the same email address used to sign in to your sites verified Google Webmaster tools.

How long does it take?

The changes you specify will take a couple of weeks to filter through and take affect. Google may follow up with requests for additional information if they deem necessary.

In the past it has been up to the user to click on the “did you mean” link if they decide that they had entered a typo or misspelling. Now Google has begun to introduce the top 2 results for their suggested “correct” spelling as the top 2 results for the original “misspelt” search. In essence pushing a number 1 ranked result back into 3rd.

For example compare the SERP’s for “Autisn” (a common misspelling) with the correct “Autism”.

THE GOOD

This new functionality will of course improve usability for the thousands of users (myself included) that don’t quite enter the search they intended. It will cut down on the number clicks and the time a user spends trying to find a useful site. It may also help Google make efficiency savings as searches may not need to be repeated possibly at the expense of ad inventory.

THE BAD

But this will also help Google cut down on the potentially lucrative strategy for SEO and search specialists of optimising for misspellings. Most strategies involve the creation of hundreds of arguably spam pages optimised for their specific misspelling. As the keyword space and the amount of content optimised for those phrases is comparatively low (generally forums are the only source of misspelt content) many hang around the search index. Google’s new “did you mean” feature may make this practice less appealing in future.

AND THE UGLY

As with most things Google what it considers a common misspelling is determined algorithmically which may not be 100% accurate.

This will particularly hurt businesses which products or services that appear to Google as misspellings. One particular example is of a 15 year old company called “Mailware”. When searching “Mailware” Google offers a “Did you mean: Malware ?” along with the further 2 results that appear top for a search on “Malware”. In essence the company’s homepage is pushed from 1st to 3rd and this will inevitable be bad for business. 

Let see if other user’s make further comments on Google’s Support forum thread initially set up when “Did you mean ?” was still just a link at the top of the results.

Optimising for value can be defined as the practice of optimising for conversion. Traditionally SEO and SEM as a whole have largely been concerned with absolute traffics numbers. Whilst it is still incredibly important for a site and its content to be exposed and perform well in search, traditional SEO metrics reporting Visits, Entries, Impressions, Page Consumption and Bounce Rates, (Of those arguably only visits and entries are truely "search" metrics) may increasingly come under scrutiny.

Traffic on its own needs to be monetised before it’ll provide revenue and therefore value to the business. Whilst its true more people on to a site that’s Ad inventory is fully sold will directly provide more revenue to the business, its not true that more people onto a premium site, shop or paid service will necessarily equal more customers.

A shift toward "Optimising for Conversions" may well come under a search specialist’s remit over the course of the next few months. New digital marketing skills such as persuasive architecture, lead generation from other website areas, split testing, SEO optimising valuable content areas and tightening up PPC campaigns by shifting keyword terms to more niche and focused users will increase CTR and the quality of the lead at the expense of high visit numbers.

Have you noticed a shift towards "optimising for value" and "optimising for conversions"?  How have your strategies changed?

Update:

It look’s as though Google Analytics has started to use the “Optimise for Value” line in their marketing material. Have a look at their strap line “Win Customers, not just Visitors” below: