The Most Important Squarespace SEO Setting

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a big part of my life. Making a few small changes to your website here and there can result in a significant and real boost in website traffic. And even though Squarespace goes a long way to address many of these factors, there are still a few settings in Squarespace that can affect your search engine rankings. Today we’ll take a look at the greatest single opportunity to boost your SEO efforts on Squarespace.

What’s the single greatest SEO change you can make to your Squarespace blog? In short, it’s the Optimize Title Ordering setting within your Squarespace website settings. Simply navigate to Website Management -> Website Settings -> Search/Indexing. Scroll down to the Search Engine Parameters section and check the box in the Optimize Title Ordering option. Mission accomplished. Read on to see why this simple change was so important.

Why are Page Titles so Important?

There are over 200 individual factors that search engines such as Google look at when they’re deciding which page should appear in the coveted #1 spot in the search results. The meta page title is generally recognized as the strongest opportunity on a given page to influence where the page shows up on in the results. Let’s take a closer look at this important field.

Your meta page title is the text that makes up the blue links in the search results. It's also the text you see in each web browser tab. Much like a title of a document or a file, the meta page title tells Google what it can expect to find on each page of your website. As a result, it plays a big part in the search engine optimization process.

The Effect of Optimizing Page Titles

In general, search engines only look at the first ~60 characters of the page title. When your page titles are not optimized, your brand name ends up taking up a large portion of your page title. This can fail to send the appropriate signals to Google regarding the topic of your page.

This brand takes up the first third of the page title in the search results.

In addition, Google bolds instances of keywords in the search results when they match a user's search query. People tend to click on results that are bolded more than results that aren't.

Bolded search results increase clicks to your web pages.

Optimizing your page title places the individual page's title prior to your brand's name, giving your keyword-rich page titles a chance to tell search engines what your page is all about. This setting also increases the chances that parts of your page title will be bolded for users. It's clear that the Optimize Page Titles is a great setting to utilize within Squarespace's website management settings.

It's nice that most of the on-page factors of SEO are addressed by Squarespace, but it's also good to change a setting here and there if it can make a big difference in traffic. What easy SEO tips have you discovered on Squarespace? If you use a platform other that Squarespace, are there non-platform-specific SEO tips you can suggest?

The Little Things are the New Big Things in Customer Service

Excellent customer service only comes around so often. Most companies focus on good enough, making infrequent examples of great customer service really stand out. I recently had one of these encounters. And let me tell you, it was a series of little things that led to an overall excellent customer experience.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a large part of my job. Every trade comes with its own tools and SEO is no exception. One of my favorite tools for SEO is Raven. Raven helps me keep track of where I rank for the keywords I'm targeting, in addition to many other vital SEO tasks. It's grown to be a central tool in my week, and when it doesn't work, I can't do certain aspects of my job.

Raven was having some difficulties last month, making it a rocky few weeks for some of Raven's features. Upset, I did what any frustrated social consumer does. I tweeted about it. Enter the Raven customer service experience and Alison Groves.

Alison Groves is Raven's User Experience Manager and Social Princess, and she was quick to respond to my disgruntled tweet. Alison responded quickly to my frustration, acknowledging my problem with a quick explanation and an expectation of when the issue would be resolved. 

Text book social media customer service right? It didn't end there. What happened next made the difference between me being a satisfied Raven customer and bonafide brand advocate.

A few days later, I received a package in the mail from Alison. In it was a snazzy Raven t-shirt, a hand-written note from Alison, and her business card.

The note further acknowledged my frustration and offered an apology for the disruption in service, reinforcing our Twitter conversation from the week before.

Alison could have left things the way they were with the Twitter conversation, but she didn't. The extra time she took to write and send me a note made me feel extra special as a customer. Another stroke of brilliance in Raven's customer service experience is the t-shirt. Not only do I get a nifty t-shirt, but Alison has also given me a tool to be an consumer advocate for Raven.

The day I received the package I tweeted about it, happily thanking Alison for her customer service. As a final stroke of brilliance, her response referenced our initial Twitter conversation, providing a great finishing touch to a seamless customer service experience. Thank you, Raven. (And thanks for hiring good people such as Alison).

In the end, it wasn't just one thing that Raven did, but it was a series of well-planned, graciously excecuted steps in their customer service experience. It was all the little things that ended up having a big impact. When was the last time you received excellent customer service, and what about the customer service do you remember the most? Leave your great customer service stories in the comments below.

Internet Marketing 101: History, Strategy & Tactics

Doing your research before you start a new task invariably leads to better results in less time. The same is true for Internet marketing. I've seen a lot of folks charge forth with new websites and social media presences without any Internet marketing 101 research, and then they wonder why their campaign didn't go anywhere.

I had a recent opportunity to present on Internet marketing, and I turned it into an Internet marketing 101 that covers the history, basic strategies and tactics of Internet marketing.

Turn Online Marketing Strategies into New Business is a presentation I gave at the Wausau, WI Chamber of Commerce's Small Business Week 2011, sponsored by Rasmussen College (note: I work for them). In my opinion, every Internet marketing crash course should involve at least three major ideas:

1. Modern Media History - Internet marketing is different in many ways from traditional marketing. Three important concepts that have shifted consumer media consumption are attention, permission and trust.
2. Internet Marketing Strategy - Every Internet marketing strategy needs to cover several main objectives. I find it's best to have a mental framework, summed up by the ideas of identifying, listening, creating, sharing and measuring.
3. Internet Marketing Tactics - Websites, blogs and social media all present different opportunities, strengths and challenges within your marketing campaign. Which channels should you be using and in what capacity?

If you're looking for a good Internet marketing 101, feel free to use video or download the slides from the event, or view the complete transcript from the recent Wausau Internet marketing event for small businesses.

Internet Marketing 101 Video:

Internet Marketing 101 Presentation:

Turn New Marketing Strategies into New Business

View more presentations from Josh Braaten

Introducing a Podcast by and for Squarespacers

A few months ago I canvassed the Squarespace community to gauge interest in a podcast about Squarespace, the amazing web-publishing software upon which this blog is built. There was enough excitement and demand to warrant the creation of one, so today I'm happy to announce the launch of an unofficial Squarespace podcast, Content, Structure & Style. 

Content, Structure & Style is a twenty-to-thirty minute, (approximately) bi-weekly show by and for the Squarespace community. I'm hosting alongside two very talented designers on the Squarespace platform, Alan Houser of Creative Component and Eric Anderson of Esquareda.com. With over ten years of industry experience each, neither Alan nor Eric are strangers to Squarespace or podcasts. (Check out their other podcasting projects, CreativeXpert Design Interviews and Workers of the Web.)

In each episode, we'll be talking about tips, strategies and client stories on the Squarespace platform. For example, our inaugural episode delves into the intracacies of the client hand-off phase of any Squarespace website design project. We promise to cover much more Squarespace territory in future episodes.

If you'd like us to cover one of your questions about Squarespace on the show, submit your questions here, send us a tweet at @Squareshow or leave a voicemail at 317-53-SQUARE. The show is nothing if not for the Squarespacer, so please do give us a shout.

What do you think about a Squarespace podcast? Would you listen? Is every other week just right or would you listen more or less frequently? Finally, feel free to leave any suggestions for future shows in the comments.

Audible: The Cure for a Boring Long Commute

Everyone has that unavoidable downtime in their lives. Commutes, chores and work-outs chew through our day while leaving our minds with nothing to do. If you're easily bored like me, this type of mental inefficiency drives you nuts.

Recently I did something about it. I signed up for Audible.com and started listening to books during my daily downtime. Now I've rid my long commute of boredom by learning about new Internet marketing strategies and tactics as I sit in traffic. Audible has been amazing so far.

My boring downtime occurs during the daily trek from St. Paul to Bloomington along the dreaded MN I-494 corridor, where hundreds of commuters inch to work five days a week. The five mile stretch of interstate is transformed into a thirty minute ride each way. Yes, I realize that my commute is brief by many standards, but still. It's three-plus hours a week of captivity that I wanted to use better.

Until signing up for Audible, I was listening to podcasts during the drive. Podcasts were great for news and information, but they often lack lasting value. Books, on the other hand, are perfect for commutes because they have the depth and coherency that podcast lack. Enter Audible audiobooks.

I'd heard of Audible through podcast legend Leo Laporte and his online network of tech shows. Laporte also convinced me to use the Squarespace web publishing platform for my blog and I haven't regretted that decision at all. It didn't take me long to warm up to the most trusted name in audiobooks. I signed up in December and haven't looked back.

Each time I get into the car, I flip on the Audible app on my iPhone and start listening to the latest book on business or Internet marketing (or whatever your cup of tea may be). Most book are around ten hours long when narrated but I use the 2x speed option on the app to speed up the pace of the narrator. As a result, I find I'm clipping through books at the rate of more than two per month just by listening during my boring and long daily commute.

I'm working towards a goal of 26 books read in 2011 along with friends Arik Hanson and Patrick Garmoe. With Audible's help I've already gotten through six of them. In fact, I've been reading so many books lately that I even created an entire book review section on my blog.

How do you deal with your downtime? Do you impatiently sit in traffic during your commute and curse the minutes of your day lost to the daily grind? What do you do to stay efficient? Do you listen to Audible audiobooks? Leave a comment below with your best tip or suggested read.