We are proud to announce that the website for our client, The Children’s Medical Center of Dayton, has tied for fifth as one of the top hospital websites, according to the Journal of Healthcare Management. The website was measured based on the quality of accessibility, content, marketing and technology. Because of our work on Dayton Children’s SEO and content optimization, they excelled in both content and marketing.

To learn more about the study conducted by the Journal of the Healthcare Management and the top ranked hospitals, read iHealthBeat’s article, “Comparing U.S. Hospitals and Health Systems’ Website Quality.” To read more about Point to Point’s contribution to Dayton Children’s top ranking website, visit our press release: Cleveland Marketing Firm Helps Client Achieve Top Ranking Website.

If you read about SEO as much as I do, you’ll see it get blamed – or worse, marginalized – for many things and reasons.

Price. Pandas. Pestilence. You name it. We even see it die on a regular basis.  Last week, an editor of The New York Times decided that “SEO is BS” and that search engines will be a relic.

But none of it has prepared me for what I read in The Atlantic this week: ‘Google Doesn’t Laugh’: Saving Witty Headlines in the Age of SEO

From David Wheeler’s article:

Indeed, as newspapers embrace search engine optimization, and as young journalists are taught to value Google visibility above all else, many copy editors fear that funny headlines are quickly going the way of the classified ad.

Absurdity aside, let’s first get this misplaced blame out of the way: Online publications don’t have to rewrite anything.

[Pushes up nerdy glasses]

Most have the ability to separate these fields, allowing writers/editors to write a separate, more descriptive and SEO-friendly headline that goes in the title tag (purely for the search engines), while keeping their witty, pun-filled headline as is (which is usually an H1 and for the readers). Yes, you’d want the terms/phrases you’d like to rank for in both fields to maximize SEO-friendliness of the content, but this is an easy win for both audiences. Even then, I’ve recommended to clients that they change the headline to the more SEO-friendly version after the initial day (or issue).

But here’s another thing:  many traditional newspaper sites already have this ability built into their CMS. Publications like the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times does it too, just check out the headline and the top of your browser.

For many journalists, SEO = headline + keyword stuffing. It’s all they know. However, if journalists really want to know and understand how SEO can help them and their publications they should worry a lot less about the importance of headlines and focus on their company’s sitemaps, site architecture, endless duplicate content, internal linking and the like.

But they won’t. Many journalists opine about headlines and keyword stuffing because that’s all the information their SEO team is giving them. And it’s all most care to know.

Sadly, it’s nothing more than Maslow’s hammer at play.

What those at The New York Times and The Atlantic may not know is that not everyone in SEO came from the web development side. Some of us are writers too. Always were. Sat in the same journalism classes. Perfected ledes for a JV field hockey games. Brainstormed those punny headlines they hold so dear.

SEO + journalist types rolled up their sleeves and figured out the best of both worlds. They learned how to syndicate, aggregate and update to the masses.

We get the love for your headlines, we’re just over it. SEO didn’t kill the cute headline, the click did. The sheer volume of content, growing exponentially and shared on social media, rendered the witty and non-descriptive headline useless. We consume media so radically differently than we once did, so why are some  journalists clinging to out-dated best practices?

Better yet, how does the story get written in the first place?

With their reams of content and years of stories, established newspapers and magazines should be dominating the search engines. But they fell asleep at the wheel. So, if you want to blame anyone, don’t blame SEO for the loss of your precious headline-writing skills. Blame your peers.

Flickr photo courtesy of Noel C. Hankamer

I promised myself I wouldn’t. But I must.

Reuters writer Deborah Cohen took the path literally hundreds have taken before. Asking, albeit in roundabout fashion,  about the death of SEO with an overused headline, “Is SEO DOA?” and a lede that only a mother could love.

Ron Springer is overhauling his company’s website and is spending a big chunk of his marketing budget to help boost its search engine ranking. He had no idea he might be throwing his money away on an outdated strategy.

Entrepreneurs like Springer may want to reconsider pouring money into search engine optimization (SEO) as their primary marketing strategy, according to Chris Dixon, who recently penned a controversial blog, titled: “SEO is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups”.

Poor Ron Springer? Poor readers who read through this nonsense.

While the article gains some momentum (and common sense), I couldn’t get past the strawman Ms. Cohen set up and thoroughly knocked down in the opening paragraphs.

Who thinks SEO should be the entire marketing budget or core strategy?

Really? In 2011?

Humblebrag/clarification time. I’ve worked with “SEO” in a variety of settings. I’ve worked with (and as) freelance SEOs. I’ve worked at an SEO shop. I’ve worked as an SEO in two very different agency settings. I’ve worked with very large organizations and with start-ups. Not even in my early days, did we recommend or want clients that utilized their entire marketing budget on SEO.

It never ends well. Haven’t we moved on from this?

Where is the outrage for spending budgets on email marketing and email-only shops? Can we pronounce email DOA? What about those brands who bet on social, only to revert back to traditional advertising a year later?

With the exception of SEO’s who are nothing but link-builders, SEO has to touch and be a part of something. Like the website. You know, only the most important marketing asset your company owns and encompasses your entire brand online. So when Ms. Cohen discusses SEO conferences touching other marketing disciplines, she acts as if it’s some recent occurrence. Post-2001, onsite SEO has to incorporate other parts of marketing. Has to.

But back to poor Ron Springer. I have no idea his situation, budget or goals. But it appears that he needed a redesign, and his current site didn’t have SEO in mind, so he built an SEO-friendly site.

How can this possibly be a bad thing?

So many sites and businesses would benefit if their design, content and marketing incorporated SEO best practices. Perhaps the year before, he fixed his product. Or brand. Maybe now is the first time he could incorporate SEO into his marketing budget.

I’ve learned that the majority who claim SEO is dead, or no longer works or doesn’t cure cancer, really didn’t have a firm understanding of all the niches that SEO encompasses or helps. I have no doubt Ms. Cohen or Chris Dixon, the entrepreneur she brings into the discussion, had the best of intentions.

But they’ve bought into the idea that SEO is some magic ball of technical secrecy. An idea no different than the snake oil salesmen who pervade the SEO industry.

If you’re website sucks, SEO isn’t going to help.

If your product sucks, SEO isn’t going to help.

If your brand sucks, SEO isn’t going to help.

If you replace “SEO” with “social media” or “email” or “people stuffed in animal costumes on the street,” no one would argue. Yet when SEO doesn’t have an immediate ROI for a start-up, people like Chris Dixon throw it under the bus.

Who’s surprised new, often unproven technologies are not something everyday Americans are searching for?

At the end of the day, most product searches still start with the search bar. Which is why SEO will continue to be relevant.

Flickr photo by extranoise

For those at least dabbling in SEO and social media for a few years, you’ve heard this story before.

Google is/has/will be a social hub, a social network, a social something. To FINALLY be that intersection of search and social. To succeed where they and others have failed.

And by now you’ve likely read all about Google’s latest venture into social search: +1.

But for those in the SEO realm, what does this mean for you? Should companies be integrating +1 in SEO and social media plans or processes?

No. Not yet. Here’s why.

+1 solves a problem that does not exist.

Raise your hand if at any point if you’ve ever felt such a deep connection to a perfect search result that you felt compelled to do something about it. Because that’s exactly what Google has asked of searchers.

In theory, the +1ing process would work like this:

1. Search the Googles for glitter unicorns.
2. Find the best glitter unicorn result in the universe.
3. Click on said result.
4. Love the result so much that you go back to your search and +1 the search result for www.sparklyunicorns.gov.
5. Go back to enjoying your glitter unicorn paradise.
6. Hope those in your social circle are influenced by your investigation.

Who would do this?

Even if the site had a +1 button/widget (akin to Facebook’s Like button), there is no benefit to the user (unlike Facebook Likes). I do not get updates. I don’t get a forum to opine on my subject/company/site.

I just click a button – for Google’s sake – and hope my social circle sees this.

Now I understand why Facebook added Likes across the web, and how others have added Likes into their social or blogging routine. Likes are built into Facebook’s DNA. So why would anyone add +1ing into their searching routine? The user gets nothing in the short-term, yet marketers are to assume that users will do this on a large scale?

Again, who would do this on such a large scale?

I know.

The same type of people whose goal in +1ing was a ploy to…

Game. The. System.

Because +1 will “influence search rankings” it’s trying to force companies (and SEOs and social media-ers) to stick the +1 button on their sites, or risk their rankings. Whatever that means. By adding +1 to both organic and paid search, Google only succeeds in giving nefarious SEOs and spammers an avenue to game the system, or think they are.

Even worse, the +1 phenomenon keeps social sites as a place to beg for votes.

Want to get the latest deal? +1 my site.

Did you like my presentation? Please +1 my blog.

If you +1 my site, I will do the same for you.

The thing is, Google knows this. They have to know this will result in a lot a of bad data. Therefore, there is no other conclusion than the value from +1 data has to be low. Lower than all the SEO signals we already have in place. To be meaningful, +1 data will need a lot of time and massive adoption.

So, what’s the point again?

+1 is not a revolution nor should it be considered a signal in social search for SEOs and social media practitioners.

With thousands of ranking signals and data points available, Google decided to give marketers a PR stunt rather a tangible metric to make the web a better place.

It’s a like an awful tattoo your buddy got on spring break to look cool. A tramp stamp on my beautiful SEO signals and variables, and in my results and on my sites.

And for Google, just as regrettable.

By shamelessly copying Facebook’s Like, +1 gives us the best example of a “Me too!” since Google copied Bing’s layout, then Bing copied all of Google’s search results. They’ve soiled their reputation as an industry leader just to mimic their biggest competitor. Again.

Flickr photo courtesy of mararie

You haven’t read this before. At least I hope not.

In the wake of the New York Times’ announcement about their paywall, it would have been really easy to jump on the bandwagon to blast the Times for a variety of reasons.  Better yet, it would have been really easy to write that blog post. Almost formulaic.

Fake (and unfounded) cries of SEO and social media suicide + a couple “content is king” references + the web was built on sharing + greedy corporations.

Boom: Easy blog post.

It would also have been incredibly dull take on the situation.

Content is expensive, not just because of the time, energy and experience that goes into the written piece, but also into the technology that allows us to curate, aggregate and consume it.

What we don’t realize is that because of all those curators, aggregators and need for SEO/social success, the actual platforms of the NYT or the Plain Dealer or Time magazine, are incredibly complex.  Because of all of the accounts, access points, etc. the NYT’s “walled” content become even more expensive.

How expensive?

Best-case scenario places the cost at $40 million plus an unfathomable amount of internal hours, promotion and advertising.

And for what?

As Felix Salmon mentions, the expected revenue is paltry compared to the other matters in the NYT bottom line:

How many of those people are there? Emily Bell reckons that the number of people who’ll even hit the paywall in the first place is only about 5% of the NYT’s 33 million or so unique visitors. That’s 1.6 million people — compare the 1.3 million people who already subscribe to the paper on Sundays. The former is not a perfect superset of the latter, of course, but there’s a big overlap; let’s say that realistically the NYT is going after a universe of no more than 800,000 people that it’s going to ask to subscribe. And let’s be generous and say that 15% of them do so, paying an average of $200 per year apiece. That’s extra revenues of $24 million per year.

No doubt, people are moving away from purchasing print subscriptions. I don’t know anyone in my peer group with a subscription locally, except myself. Advertising is also way, way down.

But since the beginning of walled content, there have been loopholes, and Google’s crawlers have often been on many an editor’s Most Wanted list as the chief culprit. But even that isn’t the case anymore.

The moment the NYT freemium walls were announced, there were not only the obvious workarounds, there are Twitter workarounds. And Facebook workarounds. And blog workarounds. And tumblr workarounds.

So this walled garden of content – years in the making and sent to save journalism’s future – was obsolete the moment it launched.

Content platforms can no longer takes years of development – even initial ones – because the way we consume content is going to change.  As will the importance of search engines. And social. And mobile. And some mystery unknown quantity. Updates and patches will always be one step behind.

Where the NYT failed was not with it’s revenue model or technology, but with by not anticipating, identifying and developing a new way to generate revenue through content entirely.

I have no doubt that if anyone is going to change paradigms in journalism it will be the NYT. I will also be a subscriber to the paywall. But this walled garden of content will not be the model that replaces existing print subscription models.

Flickr image courtesy of Travis S.

I get plenty of snide comments about my Twitter feed. Mostly that I tweet far too much.

Fair enough.

But also wondering why I read (and share) so many journalism-based tweets? As in: why care so much about journalism?

Here’s the thing. If you have any interest in SEO, you should be very interested in how journalism, more specifically news content, is indexed, disseminated and consumed. News organizations were among the first mass content producers, and Google (within Google News) is one of the oldest curators of online real-time news.

In fact, Google News was for many years the best place to go for breaking news. With its StoryRank algorithm and news sitemaps, no organization could aggregate the relevant content faster.

But those days are long gone.

Most fellow news nerds would say Google News is broken. While I can’t comprehend how complex it is to gather all of these sources, score their relevancy and get them into the some semblance of a user interface, the problem seems relatively simple: Instead of leading with a breaking story, the Google News algo relies far too heavily on the most recent article/blog post, and only from certain sources. Often leaving smaller new orgs and blogs left out.

Even worse, some of those top sources in Google News are of the SEO crap variety like the Huffington Post and others who aggregate, optimize, and repurpose long after the news is broken. And reap the traffic. All the while, the organization that broke the news is buried three pages deep, if at all.

However, the problem is not just owned by news nerds like me, it belongs to all us. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, people trust search engines more than online news providers to get their journalistic fix. So if you’re like most people, you’ll Google the news you want to read. And the GOOG will serve up the news right in your normal SERP, making it unlikely you’ll ever see the original story or ever see the Google News home page, which has gotten much better over the years.

So how is this your problem? Because with every bad result that owns the top spot in Google News, local news organizations that break the story have even less incentive to break news and reap the rewards of traffic. Reporting costs money. Developing content is expensive. If content farms and splogs own Google News (or blog search or whatever) even less media organizations can afford to be in the content game. The rich get richer and independent voice is lost.

So, whither Google News?

Perhaps I’m naive, but Techmeme and Mediagazer do a great job of curating relevant content verticals. Techmeme decided back in 2009 that more human editors, along with their algorithm, worked best for curating content. These verticals are infinitely smaller than the world that Google News lives in, but at the very least these sites value breaking news and original thought, and place the sites in the correct hierarchy.

Deciding which content is important and relevant is an issue that Google has excelled in since its humble beginnings. But news is different, it’s much more important to get right.

Google News, you can do better.

By now, you’ve probably read about AOL’s purchase of the Huffington Post.

You’ve also probably read plenty of stories why it’s a good purchase, bad purchase, good for journalism, bad for journalism, good for social media, and of course, bad for social media.

It’s all irrelevant.

Here’s what (we think) we know:

• AOL purchased Huffington Post for roughly $315 million.
• The Huffington Post has apparently tripled it’s value in three years.
• The Huffington Post will generate roughly $60 million in revenue over 2011.

If you do the math, this obviously means AOL believes that the HuffPo philosophy is both scalable (with AOL’s additional funding) and transferable to other AOL content properties, like TechCrunch (purchased for $25-40M) and Engadget (purchased in 2008) and – my favorite hyperlocal – Patch. Otherwise, it’s a terrible investment.

This also means that AOL believes that Google will continue to view their content as relevant, and not keyword-infused spam. Therefore,  the only entity that will determine the success (or failure) of this merger is neither HuffPo nor AOL, but Google. With a flip of their algorithm, the GOOG could render all HuffPo content worthless.

But who makes that kind of investment into such a volatile search market? Specifically when Google is coming out with guns blazing about improving the quality of their search results because of sites like Demand Media, a collection of sites that exist solely by spamming the search results, then selling ads.

Especially when it’s rumored that Google hasn’t even released the full Kraken on spam in the search results. What if this deal was done too soon? Again, just like Demand Media.

So, again, who makes that kind of investment into such a market? Someone who is desperate. Someone like Tim Armstrong, CEO at AOL, who is already on thin ice with investors. The same guy who wants video stories to go from being 4% of all stories produced to 70% and the percentage of stories optimized for search engines to reach 95%, among other things.

Pick your cliche. Tim Armstrong is swinging for the fences, throwing a “Hail Mary” and down to his last strike.

All in one.

Because he knows if he is unsuccessful, it’s no longer his problem, he just gets fired. Nor is it the problem of HuffPo founder Arianna Huffington, as the transaction was mostly in cash.

But as those who care about SEO and content, it is all of our problem. The HuffPo/AOL alliance is now the model for all content sites. And because of it, they’re all your competition. If you thought you were tired of hearing “We’re all publishers!” before, get used to it. You will see newspapers sites, portals  and social media start-ups now racing to generate even more content than ever before.

And yet, some continue to poke at the need for optimized content.  My guess is that they’ll be working on their content plan this evening.

Betting your company on something one has no control over – especially on a model that is barely profitable – is never a good idea. Which is why unless AOL reached out to Google about keeping their content in the SERPs, You Got Mail got hosed.

Flickr photo courtesy of arnold | inuyaki

It’s become incredibly difficult to get noticed.

In order to get through the pinhole, advertisers have to be both timely AND relevant. And one of the most trusted sources to provide timely and relevant messages – Google – has been getting hammered (seriously) on the relevancy of their results over the last three months.

This means one of three things:

1. Google is going to get better, faster, smarter.
2. Bing is going to get better, faster, smarter.
3. They’re all going to get better, faster, smarter.

I’m going with No. 3, and because of it those dabbling in SEO (or those wanting to benefit from it) should also start considering becoming not just a content producer, but a good writer. Why, because the noise level is off the charts and your competitors (other content producers like blogs, newspapers, trade pubs, etc.) often will beat you on volume. Because it takes so much brain power, every piece of content needs to do as much as possible.

What is good writing? Good writing is smart. It speaks directly to the audience and makes them want to perform an action. The better written the material/content one offers, the more likely the desired outcome will occur. Groupon knows this. Woot knows this. And yet, SEO practitioners often ignore it because it’s either one more thing to do, or because Google hasn’t made us. Not yet.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting giving up on the onsite and offsite basics in lieu of becoming a Pultizer-prize winning writer. But with everything else, we all need to do (and be) more for clients and ourselves.

Not sure you can become a better writer overnight? Start with these three activities when you begin your next piece of content.

1. Write three titles.

Each piece of content you write should have three titles: a headline, a title tag and an less-than-140-character title. All serve a different purpose and all serve a different audience, don’t be lazy and use the same prose for all three. The social web is far too important to auto-post your headline onto Twitter/Facebook. By writing each title in a format that causes people to click, you’ve removed the first barrier to entry. Most importantly, writing three headlines forces the writer to flesh out the idea (and purpose) more clearly. If you can’t make it interesting in the headlines, you won’t in the body.

2. Test out your material.

There’s a reason why you’ve been reading about writing on multiple sites and guest blogging (for SEO benefit) repeatedly over the last three years. Yes, the link credibility earned can be impressive, but an unsung benefits is that writers get another chance to test their material in a new venue. Testing is brought up all the time within SEO, but often not to the written word itself. For example, vary your length, the longread is not dead, and has some serious long-term benefits.

Even if you don’t have multiple sites or guest blogging opportunities, find a forum and get the bad writing out of your system. Flesh out those ideas, while impulse writing is good, edited writing is better.

3. Tell as story.

I’ve harped on this before. But even if you have succeeded in writing a good headline and got the visitor to your site, how do you get them to stay? Give them a reason to stay and a reason to come back.

As with many marketing disciplines, the SEO-practitioner, must do and be more for clients. Whereas it was once good enough to get clients site up to speed, high-five and watch the traffic pour in. Optimizers must be good writers moving forward.

How are you becoming a better writer today?

Flickr photo courtesy of weexinsitu || Stefanie Doll

I’m not telling you anything you shouldn’t know or have already expected for some time.

As confirmed by Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land, both Google and Bing confirmed they use certain social signals (within Facebook and Twitter) in their real-time search, social-only search and their traditional search results.

It should be be surprise that having authoritative influence and relevant content is rewarded by search engines. SEOMoz’s Rand Fishkin even took a guess as to what other social signals may trigger Google and Bing’s prying eyes.

As I said above, while this should come as no surprise, I fear how this will motivate the local social media ninja. You know the type: preys on local organizations; follows then, unfollows accounts rapidly to increase followers; then cross-spams everyone without the local organization’s knowledge. When the ninjas get to reading these articles in about two months, it will only increase said ninja’s resolve to continue down this path.

But while the social media ninja has an excuse to be so tactically focused, you do not have that luxury.

Neither SEO nor social media has any real value unless they are part of a bigger idea. Goals. Brands. Concept. Whatever. Followers have no value if you can’t entice them to action. Updates have no value unless they are persuasive. Rankings have no value unless the page converts.

Let’s all agree that social media marketing is nothing more than a tool to achieve and tie into the big idea. So is the process of SEO. Neither is mandatory. But both work best together.

Flickr photo courtesy of mehul.antani

A tipping point. We have one.

It appears a large number of marketers (and life coaches) in the social realm have stumbled upon and are trying to capitalize on the idea of content marketing, the art of developing and promoting relevant content. And as ninjas are prone to do, they’ve been using this groundswell of momentum to start slapping the term all over the place.

While we kid our ninjas because we love them, it’s not their fault.

We’ve trained everyone to identify hot terms and phrases then place them in their blog headlines and cram ‘em into their Twitter profiles. But before content marketing crosses that threshold, I want to go on record that the topic is far too sophisticated to let it die slowly upon the pile of outdated catchphrases.

I beg you.

The idea of content as an online marketing tactic has existed in the SEO lexicon for quite some time and will be around well after Facebook takes on Google in 2012 (allegedly). In theory, it has been a part of advertising, marketing and communications for even longer.

Yet, it languishes and unjustly so.

To help illustrate that point, below I’ve outlined a few reasons why we cannot let content marketing be a term of the masses. If everyone is a content marketer, no one is a content marketer.

1. Content marketing cannot work without a deep understanding of a desired audience.

You would think this is obvious – alas – that is not the case.

Think of each target audience you are trying to reach and the places that they congregate. If a practitioner doesn’t know how to engage those audiences with relevant messaging, how can they possibly be marketing?

2. Content marketers must understand branding.

Every single piece of content you put out there should be consistent to that very specific audience you are trying to reach. After that, content should take advantage of any existing brand equity that exists.

Others may say that for content to be shareable, it must be stripped of it’s brand so as to remove any sales pretense. I disagree.

It depends on the overall goal of such content as well as the proposed reaction of the audience. Branded content increases the desired action of the target audiences because it is in the voice tailored just for them as designated by the strategic marketing plan.

3. Content marketers must understand analytics.

One of the best parts of developing content is examining the results and learning from it, therefore any onsite and offsite metrics you can analyze and makes sense of is crucial to campaign and departmental growth.

While each client and audience is different, knowing how to segment and test certain variables can help the strategic thought process for future campaigns.

4. Content marketers must understand SEO

Understanding SEO doesn’t mean having an SEO-friendly site, it means being conscious of the entire process from competitive universe to keyword selection to how content fits into an existing link building plan.

It also means planning the ideal format and lifespan of a particular piece of content. For example, if it’s a guest blog post, will it link back to your desired site, how long will it be up and what type of traffic should you expect? Or, if your content is part of a microsite, marketers must map out the life cycle of the site to determine when it needs to be redirected into the main site.

5. Content marketers must understand the client’s sales cycle

Each specific piece of content must exist to move the prospect or customer to a new stage in the sales cycle, however, it would help tremendously to understand what part of the sales cycle needs help.

6. Content is by definition, tactical.

While others argue semantics about “content marketing” and “content strategy,” the fact remains that content should be driven by strategic marketing first.

While there are some tremendous content strategists and marketers in the enterprise, this thought process is often missed in smaller marketing departments. And if content marketing is destined for the masses, do your part and educate the masses.

If you are interested in hearing more about our theory on content marketing, please let us know.

Flickr photo courtesy of Bearfaced