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From a user experience point of view, 404 pages are not something you want to see. If you reach one, it means the content is gone or has been moved. Also, the average Internet user has no idea what the "404" actually means, even though that's usually the message they see. For webmasters and search engine marketers, 404 pages can provide a valuable opportunity to market your website, instead of frustrating your visitors.

However you decide to make your 404 page, keep these principals in mind:

404 Page Principals for Search Marketing

1. Try to make the page look similar to the rest of your website
2. Use language that the user will understand
3. Explain to the user where they are and how they got there
4. Include a search box so a user can find what they're looking for
5. Link back to your homepage
6. Link to something unique on your website
7. If you can't do any of the above, at least do something memorable

Let's look at how some high profile websites handle their 404 pages.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon takes a more traditional approach, but at least they maintain their site design, link to their home page and have a funny message, "It's not the end of the world..."

Pownce

Pownce keeps it simple with, "Ack! We can't find that page." and they show off their age with retro-cool Star Wars reference.

Mixx

Mixx provides a clever page and aesthetically pleasing page, but I'd like to see the navigation.

LiveJournal

LiveJournal does an excellent job of stating the error message (without the number) and explaining to the user what has happened. However, nothing can explain a goat reading a newspaper while taking a crapper.

Fark

In true Fark style, there's a basic message with a well endowed squirrel. More could be said, but there's really no need.

Etsy

Etsy has a Zelda "I am error." page. They include their navigation and site search capability, which is good.

Boagworld

The error page for Boagworld encompasses most of the 404 page features we prefer. It includes their site navigation, a mildly funny "Zoinks!!!" and clear messages with appropriate links.

Pukka Dawn

On the other hand, Pukka Dawn provides an orange. That's right, just an orange.

And at Sitening, we provide our main navigation, a silly message and other options for the user to navigate to.

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There's been a lot of hype lately about a new search marketing training video service called Internet Marketing Ninjas. There's good reason for the hype — their videos star heavy hitters in the search marketing world, which include:

• Aaron Wall from SEO Book
• Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim
• Bill Slawski from SEO by the Sea
• Jim Gilbert & Christine Churchill from KeyRelevance
• Cameron Olthuis
• Neil Patel from ACS
• Jeremy Schoemaker from ShoeMoney
• Jill Whalen from HighRankings
• Jim Boykin from We Build Pages
• Lee Odden from TopRank
• Todd Malicoat from Stuntdubl
• And more! (or at least they say so on their website)

As interesting as this new video service looks, Internet Marketing Ninjas aren't the first people to do this. Market Motive actually started providing SEO video training earlier last year. Founded by Michael Stebbins, John Marshall and Avinash Kaushik, they started Market Motive to provide consulting and marketing services for mid to large sized businesses that includes web analytics, paid search management, search engine optimization and email marketing management. Although both services appear to offer videos on similar topics, there are differences.

Video Quality

The first difference is quality. Market Motive's videos have an appearance of professionalism that Search Engine Ninjas seems to be missing. Market Motive's videos are created in presentation format with voiceovers. The presentation is similar to a well structured presentation that you would expect to get at an industry conference. Whereas Internet Marketing Ninjas videos are a mixed bag of coffee time with Aaron Wall, Andy Beal in a room with a projector and Christine Churchill in a dim room. Several of their videos do have presentations, but the "watch me talk" format is more distracting than Market Motive's strict presentation format. Overall, from watching Internet Marketing Ninjas' preview videos, it's quite a hodgepodge.

Industry Celebrities

I'm not talking about anyone that's going to show up on TMZ or that my mom would know, I'm talking about names that are hot in the industry right now. Internet Marketing Ninjas has a full roster of names that are hot, while Market Motive doesn't. However, the emphasis here is on the word "celebrity." In the search marketing world, there are high profile names that have created a cult of personality for themselves. I think the "celebrity" value of Internet Marketing Ninjas is one of their best assets. Like any product or service, you want to have brand names — or people in this case — to help sell your service.

In Internet Marketing Ninjas' case, one of their greatest assets is the "easy sell" that you're going to get good information, because they have videos of people that everyone has heard of and therefore trusts. Now, that's not to say that Market Motive doesn't have highly skilled and experienced instructors on their team, because they do. Many of them have experience speaking at the same events as Internet Marketing Ninjas' instructors. In fact, Todd Malicoat is working double-team for both services, but there is no doubt that people who are relatively new to the SEO community are going to be much more aware of Internet Marketing Ninjas' presenter roster than Market Motive's.

SEO Tools

One thing that Market Motive doesn't have are SEO Tools. As an added incentive to subscribing to Internet Marketing Ninjas, they offer use of their now private SEO Tools (most of which came from We Build Pages). Aaron over at TheMadHat puts their added incentive into perspective:

Now most of these tools used to be free so I tried a lot of them, and they work okay. I assume since it's going private they will be maintained a little better (something similar to the SEOmoz Premier tools). That being said, I wouldn't sign up just for the tools. It's nice to have them all in one place, but the majority can be found elsewhere or developed yourself with an intermediate level of coding skills.

Market Motive provides details about many free SEO tools in several of their videos, so I'm not sure how necessary Internet Marketing Ninjas' are. However, it is nice having them all in one place and being part of the overall package.

Pricing

Both services are priced similarly. Market Motive charges $299/mo ($3,588/yr) or $2,999/yr, while Internet Marketing Ninjas has only one option, $2,995/yr. There are pluses and minuses to this pricing. With Market Motive you can pay monthly and bale out after the first month, only losing $299. However, with Internet Marketing Ninjas, you have to pay an upfront annual fee of almost three thousand dollars, but you do get access to private SEO tools. Ultimately, it really depends on who and what you're most interested in and how much money you're willing to risk.

Final Thoughts

These services seem great for those who might be a beginner to intermediate search marketing specialist. I also have no doubt that each service has information that would be useful even to the most experienced search marketing specialist. If I worked at a large company or search marketing agency, I would certainly consider getting a subscription to one or both of these services. I have no doubt that I would learn something new from each of these videos and the information would be very helpful to my less experienced search marketing specialists.

It should be noted that this article was not a true "review" of each service, it was a comparison of their publicly available offerings. I've never had full access to either service. Of course, if any of these services wants to give me free access, I will gladly write an in depth review about my experience.

Comment [3]

Promoting a locale-based website can require different and somewhat modified search marketing techniques. For example, if you're marketing a website with a national or global audience, you may focus on building links from other websites that have a similar audience. However, for websites that have a local audience, it's generally best to focus on websites that are relative to your locale.

Note: These techniques assume that you've already done the basic search engine optimization techniques, like providing search engine friendly URLs and HTML to your pages, and including your locale in the title element of the head area.

Local Contact Information

Always Include Your Address & Phone

The locally focused website must always have local contact information on every page. That includes a valid address and phone number for the area the website is serving. You may want to consider using semantic structure in your HTML, like using the hCard Microformat (You can easily create an hCard using the hCard Creator).

Include Related Cities In the Footer

If your website is focused on one city, but there are several cities within the same locale, you may want to include those city names on each page — including a sentence on the footer of each page that says, "We also serve [city name], [city name] and [city name].", should be sufficient.

What About Multiple Websites for Multiple Cities?

What if you run multiple websites that target different cities, but only have one physical address? That can be solved by setting up post office boxes at The UPS Store and then forwarding all of your mail to your main address. Setting up an account at The UPS Store is also desirable, because their addresses provide real physical addresses, not PO Boxes.

Get Local With Virtual Phone Numbers

Providing a locally based number is also a good technique, because it reinforces the idea that the website is locally based. Vonage provides virtual numbers at a low monthly fee that allow you to have several phone numbers with local area codes of your choice. All of the virtual numbers can be configured to forward to one main phone number.

Submit to Local Search Engines and Directories

One Submit to Rule Them All!

Once you have your local contact information and business details organized and available on your website, you will then need to submit it to local search engines and directories. The most important step in this process is by far the easiest. The vast majority of local search engines and directories get their data from data providers. For example, by submitting your business data to the infoUSA — click on the Update My Listing link located on their footer — you are also populating most of the major local search engines and directories, like Citysearch, AOL City Guides, YELLOWPAGES.com, Yahoo! Local and Google Maps.

Provide That Extra Data

Although data providers offer a quick hit solution, it's still a good idea to submit your business details directly to some of the major websites. For example, submitting directly to Yahoo! Local and Google Maps provides options that you don't get with infoUSA. Such as, images, more detailed descriptions and other more detailed information.

Article Creation and Distribution

Keep It Original and Keep It Local

As every SEO specialist knows, original content is the only way to go when populating a website. However, special attention should be given to locally focused websites. Not only should the content include references (keywords related) to the locale, it should also include stories, information and links to local services and websites. Those links, in particular, help establish and solidify your website's focus to search engines, and also act as a marketing tool, bringing awareness of your website to the websites you're linking to (through viewing referrers, trackbacks, etc...).

Mass Distribution + Republication = Organic Linking

Article distribution (aka syndication) is also an excellent and proven way to build immediate links to your website and also foster organic links through the republication of your content. The same rules apply to the content as described in the previous paragraph, with a couple of exceptions. First, you may not want to include and endorse other local websites. Second, when and if possible (and appropriate), include the locale and the keywords associated with your website's service in the title of the article.

Blogs and Comments

When In Doubt, Blog

Keeping an active blog is one of the best ways to grow awareness about your website. Similar to creating content for local websites, blog entries should also include information and links to local websites. In fact, by using that strategy, you will probably see greater growth if you blog regularly.

Comment Locally and Comment Often

In addition to managing your own blog, it's important to research and participate in the local blogosphere. Look for websites that are focused solely on your locale, subscribe to them in your RSS aggregator and then frequently read and comment on their entries. Be careful to not be too controversial in what you write, but try to make your comments interesting enough that readers will want to click on your name and learn more about you.

Be Real or As Real As Possible

In the blogosphere — especially the local blogosphere — it's important to either use your real name or the name of a persona. Otherwise, if you leave the name of your website or business, instead of person's name, most people will assume your comment is spam.

Social Networks

Complete Your Profile

Social networks can play a crucial role in promoting your website. Most social networks provide the ability to create a profile and allow you to leave a link to your website. After you setup your profile, you should then look for local groups on their network and join any you can find.

Use It if They Have It

Once you've created your profile and have joined any available groups, you should then focus on the different ways you can promote your website on their network. An obvious place to start is a group you've joined. You should participate in discussions and promote your website when appropriate — possibly in your signature or in a related thread.

Focus on Geo-Targeting and Tags

There are several social networks that allow you to submit and share content that is locally based. For example, Newsvine allows you to seed links or write articles and specify the locale. You can also include the locale and keywords related to your website in each item you submit to them. If the network doesn't request a locale for the bookmark, seeded link or article, then just make sure you include it in the tag and keyword list for that submission.

Press Releases

Let the Media Know You're There

Press releases that are targeted to a geographical location are often cheaper to distribute and offer exposure to local media. Depending on the PR service used — services like BusinessWire and PRWeb — each release can include links to your website and provide organic linking opportunities from websites that republish the story.

Additional Local Search Resources

As with most SEO techniques, this article was built upon the knowledge of others. Several of the ideas in this entry were inspired by the following resources.

• Before You Launch That Local Small Business Website by Sugarrae
• "Local Search" blog entries by Graywolf (aka Michael Gray)

Comment [2]

There is an update to this story after the original article.

I never thought I'd see the day when a giant company that sells cheap plastic crap would turn search marketing into a cheap crappy service. Oh, but that day has come. Wal-Mart has launched a new service for search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) via Sam's Club. The official name of the service is called Sam's Club Online Services.

Packages start as low as $25/mo and include such amazing features as:

• Profile creation tool with unlimited updates
• Profile distribution to major search engines and online Yellow Page directories like YPGuides
• Hand submission of your website URL to the major search engines and directories

From what I could gather from their major features, SEO is now all about the profile. What profile you ask? Good question. I wasn't able to find anything on their website — other than an online form for more information — that would describe what this amazing Sam's Club profile was all about. All I know is that I can make unlimited updates to it and that it will be distributed to major search engines. Sounds retarded amazing. I also get hand submission of my website URL to major search engines, which is funny, because I didn't think that option even existed anymore. I'm pretty sure that Google won't even put your site in their sandbox until they discover a link to your website on another website. Of course, if you insist on kickin' it old school, you can spend all day doing your uber Wal-Mart-style SEO right here.

I have no doubt that these services are completely outsourced to overseas firms. I also have no doubt that the people doing this so-called hand submission have absolutely no idea what they're doing in regards to SEO. Of course, there is a bright side to this type of cheap and useless crap. Not only will those companies get what they pay for, it will make my job easier to out perform any of them. Of course, the downside — of which there are many — is that their service will no doubt give SEO a bad name, hurting the industry as a whole by pushing selling their cheap plastic SEO services to the masses.

Update: Teri McCready of 360 Web Marketing did some snooping around (actually filled out their contact form) and posted what she found out on the SEO 2.0 Google Group.

Couldn't resist filling out their lead form to find out what I'd get for $25.00 a month. Looks like services are provided by LeadConnect, http://leadconnect.innuity.com/. On the LeadConnect site it mentions local search for $39.95/mo.

Her finding also sheds light on the infamous Profile. The profile is your business information (address, phone number, etc...). They submit it to local search engines and data providers — something that is hardly worth the cost per month, unless of course you have no clue how to do it yourself, which does seem to be their core audience.

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