Most Important Search Optimization Technique - Page Titles

Since ProductCritic is the first site that Gerry and I have worked together on, I learned a lot along the way. One of the most important topics (aside from content and database schema and the look of the site via CSS) is that once we launched the site, how would people find it?

Naturally, we're hoping that this blog will help with that (then again, how will most people find this blog?) but Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a huge part in people finding the site.

While there are a lot of topics when it comes to SEO, we decided to target the easiest and most natural strategies. At the top of the list is ensuring that every page on your site has a proper title (what is displayed at the top of the browser window).

If you go through ProductCritic, you will notice that every page has a unique title that is very specific to the content on that page. If you go to Digital Cameras, the title is "Digital Camera Reviews - ProductCritic". If you go to a specific product, like the Nikon D80 (which BTW, is the highest ranked product on the site so far), the title is "Nikon D80 Reviews - ProductCritic". We've learned that, while the title should be relatively short, you should put the main purpose of the page in the title and you should put your company name after that. The reason for this is so that when the page shows up on a search result, the main topic is what's most prominent (e.g. "Nikon D80 Reviews") and if anything does get cut off, it will most likely be your company name (which is not the main interest of the search anyways).

The Copywriting Maven has a good short summary on this topic. What I find interesting though is that their blog entry doesn't take it's own advice! That page's title is "The Copywriting Maven: Top 10 SEO Copywriting Tips to Ranking Success: Tip #1 -- Title Tags" which goes against some of their own points.

Help! I Bought A Camcorder And Suck At Shooting Movies!

I must admit that my camcorder skills are kindergarten poor. My still shots with my dSLR camera are quite a bit better than they used to be after I learned some key tips such as The Rule of Thirds but I haven't learned the same level of tips for camcorders.

PC World has put up a short list of 5 tips in an article entitled "Making Movies: Tips for New Camcorder Owners". Even though I've owned a camcorder for a couple years, following some of these tips would have certainly helped me.

If you received a new camcorder for Christmas, I'd suggest investing one day going online and learning some key tips. It'll pay off hugely in the quality and watchability of your home movies.

I'm Already A Stats Addict

As part of starting up a new site, you need to get all your metrics in place early. ProductCritic currently uses stats gathering tools:

• Google Analytics
• Google Adsense
• Google Webmaster Tools

Even though the site hasn't officially launched, I'm still checking the metrics quite regularly to see the affects that the implementation of various strategies or link sites have on visits. Since we haven't really even officially launched to friends and family, we can tell that most of the current visits to both ProductCritic and this blog are either from people stumbling onto the sites or are our own clicks.

Besides ensuring that we are being spidered from the big search engines and all posts on this blog are being pinged by Weblogs or Technorati, I saw a new site called Tag A Cloud that allows you to create a tag for your site and some keywords as a link to your site. Almost immediately, I saw referring links from Tag A Cloud. For interests sake, the tag I added to that site for ProductCritic is "stuffyouwanttobuy".

I'm looking forward to seeing how ProductCritic grows over the year. The problem with being addicted to seeing the web stats is that they'll become even more addicting once there's some growth to the visits and (hopefully) to this blog.

One thing we've learned that we'd like to pass on is to get your site on Google's Webmaster Tools as early as possible and upload a sitemap. It takes quite a while for Google to crawl your site when you first start out (ProductCritic hasn't been crawled since October).

ProductCritic Comparisons With PC World's Top 10 Cameras

In a previous post, I pointed out PC World's 2006 list of Top 10 Point & Shoot Cameras. ProductCritic has been updated to include all these cameras so I thought it would be appropriate to provide a comparison of the PC World ratings with the ProductCritic scores for those same cameras to demonstrate the difference that aggregate ratings can provide.

PC World's Top 10 List

1. HP Photosmart R727 - 82 (ProductCritic Score = 73)
2. Canon Powershot A540 - 81 (ProductCritic Score = 79)
3. Casio Exilim EX-Z600 - 80 (ProductCritic Score = 80)
4. Fujifilm Finepix F30 - 79 (ProductCritic Score = 85)
5. Canon Powershot SD630 - 79 (ProductCritic Score = 79)
6. Fujifilm Finepix E900 - 78 (ProductCritic Score = 84)
7. HP Photosmart R927 - 78 (ProductCritic Score = 72)
8. Nikon Coolpix S6 - 77 (ProductCritic Score = 75)
9. Kodak EasyShare C743 - 77 (ProductCritic Score = 63)
10. HP Photosmart R967 - 76 (ProductCritic Score = 79)

So, with the same cameras, ranked according to ProductCritic Score gives this list (along with their ProductCritic Scores):

1. Fujifilm Finepix F30 - 85
2. Fujifilm Finepix E900 - 84
3. Casio Exilim EX-Z600 - 80
4. Canon Powershot A540 - 79
5. Canon Powershot SD630 - 79
6. HP Photosmart R967 - 79
7. Nikon Coolpix S6 - 75
8. HP Photosmart R727 - 73
9. HP Photosmart R927 - 72
10. Kodak EasyShare C743 - 63

I'm not surprised that the lists are so different. I am surprised that PC World's list would include cameras that most other reviewers have completely panned. For example, the Kodak and two HP cameras are not just at the bottom of the list above, they are at the bottom of all cameras that are currently included in ProductCritic!

Also surprising to me was the high ratings for the Fujifilm cameras. I need to have a closer hands on look at these cameras as it hits my confidence level in recommending Canon point & shoot cameras to my friends.

Uh Oh! Canon Issues Safety Notice for Powershot A530/A540's

Canon USA has issued a safety notice about Powershot A530 and A540's overheating. Here is a portion of the notice:

"We have discovered that, in a very small number of Powershot A530 and Powershot A540 digital cameras, the area around the battery cover on the bottom of the camera may become hot. We would like to convey the details of this phenomenon and our service policy."

Please read the full Canon Safety Notice for more information.

I really like the Canon digital cameras and routinely recommend them (especially the A540) to friends. I hope this is a small issue and doesn't affect any future recommendations. I wonder if anybody has actually been burnt by the overheating area.

PC World's 2006 Top 10 Point & Shoot Cameras

PC World has created their Top 10 Point & Shoot Cameras for 2006. The number of HP cameras on the list is a surprise to me as we haven't aggregated the reviews for any HP cameras yet on ProductCritic. I also don't know anyone who actually owns a HP digital camera so we've had no experience at all with them. My personal philosophy is that I'd rather get a camera from a camera company vs. a computer technology company.

Their second spot camera, the Canon Powershot A540 is actually in the middle of the pack on ProductCritic which goes to show the value of summarizing the scores from multiple reviewers.

We'll be aggregating the reviews for all the cameras on the PC World Top 10 list today on ProductCritic.

Mobile Gazette's 2006 Good, Bad, & Ugly Cell Phones List

The folks over at MobileGazette.com have provided their Cell Phone Review of 2006: The Good, Bad, & the Ugly.

Their winning pick of 2006 is the Sony Ericsson K800i.

Their worst phone of 2006 is the BenQ-Siemens EF91.

When I go through their list, it really makes me realize that the cell phone manufacturers have no idea how to name their phones. That's why I think Motorola is doing a great job with their RAZR and KRZR naming schemes. "RAZR" rolls off your tongue just a little bit more smoothly than "K800i".

Very Soft Launch of ProductCritic.com

We've opened up ProductCritic for general consumption by the public but it's still a very "soft" launch in that we've only told friends and family. I'm sure some members of the general public will stumble upon it though. We'll be getting feedback on the site and making some small tweaks and adjustments before our planned "official" launch in January 2007.

It's quite interesting and satisfying to see a site you've created from scratch finally go out in the wild.