Yesterday I sat down with a beautiful client of mine (my wife) who is the marketing muckity-muck at Casco Development, developers of ShopVue: software that tracks shop floor data collection, labor management (time and attendance,) and graphic dispatching into a new category called Shop Floor eXecution (SFX.)

She had been reading my recent newsletter on tracking your Google rank using Keyword Tracker. She was curious to find out how she was doing on some keywords that were important to her, such as:

• data collection (n/a)
• factory data collection  (n/a)
• shop floor data collection  (12)
• shop floor control,  (n/a) and
• shop floor execution, (1+2)

In addition, she was curious how she ranked for "lean manufacturing,"(n/a) a very hot topic in manufacturing right now. Casco’s current Google ranking appears in parentheses after each keyphrase. The n/a doesn’t mean they don’t appear, just that Keyword Tracker hasn’t found them yet, due to a limit on the amount of searching it can do for any one client in a given day.

We did a quick Word Tracker report to find out how effective these key phrases were. If you don’t know what Word Tracker does, read my newsletter "Research Your Keyphrases" or take a look at 7 Days to Search Engine Success.

Outside of "lean manufacturing," none of these phrases were overly popular as searches. However, given the company’s niche and the scope of one sale, they don’t need huge traffic, just qualified traffic.

To improve Casco’s rank we updated the title of the home page from "Casco Development: Real-time Control for Shop Supervisors" to "ShopVue: Shop Floor and Factory Data Collection – Casco Development." We updated the header for the home page to "Real-time Shop Floor Data Collection."

The keyword analysis revealed a lot of requests (searches) for "definition of…[keyphrase]."  Cybele (again, my wife) is now going to do is develop an F.A.Q. that defines a lot of the more popular phrases. Wherever those phrases appear on the site, they can be linked as anchor text to the definitions on the F.A.Q. page. I.e.,

Q. What is the definition of shop floor or factory floor data collection?

A. Shop floor–a.k.a. factory floor–data collection is…

My suggestion to her was to put each definition on its own page to keep the focus of the page as narrow as possible. A Web page that is about everything will rank well for nothing.

I also suggested the definition pages have 3 parts:

1. Define the term.
2. Talk about how ShopVue can benefit the client in regards to the term.
3. Have a call to action; in this case, getting them to complete a form online.

Remember: it’s not just about driving qualified traffic to your Web site, it’s about converting them to customers. Getting them to take action. Filling out a form. Signing up for your email newsletter. Picking up the phone. Making a purchase.

A Web site that is optimized for search engines but forgets that it’s people who are going to be using the site will always fail.

In addition to all the work Cybele will be doing on improving and optimizing her site, Casco should also benefit from the number of keywork-appropriate links we’ve created to their site from this blog.

We’ll check back on Casco in a month or two to see how they’re doing on their search phrases, and whether they are getting more prospects to leave their contact information.

Rich Brooks
Web marketer

Using a free tool called Keyword Tracker you can track your Google rank even if your site doesn’t appear on the first page…or the first hundred pages at Google.

A while back I talked about using Keyword Tracker. In flyte’s free email newsletter (available today) we walk you through the entire process. You can read the Keyword Tracker tutorial at our site.

One concept that often confuses site owners is that a Web site will rank differently for different searches.

For example, flyte may rank well for "Portland, Maine Web design", but not as well for "Maine Web design". (Or, strangely enough, maybe better.) We will also have a different rank for "search engine marketing", "email marketing", or "Portland, Maine Web developers".

Oddly, we don’t even show up under "People Magazine’s 50 Hottest Bosses."

In any case, take a look at the tutorial and start tracking your own results. You’ll get regular feedback on whether changes you’re making to your site are improving or hurting your rank for different Google searches.

Rich Brooks
51st Hottest Boss (Evidently)

Walt Mossberg wrote a negative review of the beta version of the Google Toolbar in his Personal Technology column today in the Wall St. Journal: Google Toolbar Inserts Links in Others’ Sites, And That’s a Bad Idea.

Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle delivers another perspective in his article "Google Toolbar: Why the fuss?"

Mr. Mossberg asserts that some of the new features in the Google toolbar are similar in nature to the despised Microsoft "Smart Tags" which would add links to a Web site–without the site owner’s permission–to other sites…often ones with ties to Microsoft, or in this case, Google. Although the features aren’t as automatic or in-your-face as Microsoft’s version, he claims it’s a "slippery slope."

Mr. Silverman shoots back that the user has to first install the Google Toolbar, then engage it for each site being used.

Since I’m on a Mac, and the Google toolbar is only available on Window’s versions of IE, I haven’t used it yet. You might think that means I don’t have an opinion. Au contraire…

As someone who develops Web sites for a living I would be extremely concerned that someone’s altering the usabilty, design and perhaps purpose of a Web site I own or have developed. I don’t want any "post-factory" modifications to my Web sites…and I’m sure my clients don’t either.

The bottom line is that it is a slippery slope. If this catches on, another toolbar will come along that will be more aggressive, all in the pursuit of being more "user-friendly" to unseat Google. Soon my Amazon links may be rewritten as links to another bookseller, or to Amazon, but without my affiliate link in there. All in the name of progress. The road to hell, and all that.

Last night I finished Philip K. Dick’s "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Rick Deckard, the protagonist, tracks down and "retires" androids who have gone AWOL, pretending to be human.

He questions why the Rosen Corporation has to make them so human-like…after all, if they weren’t so close to being human, they wouldn’t be a threat. Of course, if the Rosen Corporation hadn’t made a more life-like model, someone else would have. And that’s the slippery slope.

I don’t want my movies colorized. I don’t want an animated paperclip saying, "It looks like you’re writing a letter." And I certainly don’t want anybody "adding functionality" to my Web site.

BTW, I hope no toolbar out there rewrote my affiliate’s link to Amazon.

Rich Brooks
I Am Not A Luddite