In the upper right, you might expect a phone number or a cart button or a ‘my account’ link.  You look in the footer for the guts of the site, like if you want a site map, or need to drill down for contact information. Navigation is generally along the top, with some secondary navigation on the left column. Can you imagine if things were rearranged, how irritating that would be? You’d be looking all over the page for things that aren’t where they should be.  What if the navigation was on the bottom, and picture galleries ran from right to left to advance?

These things, web conventions, evolved over time. They became standardized, in a monkey-see, monkey-do fashion since one thing designers look at is a lot of sites to see what other people are doing. They’ve now hardened up into established practice and you violate them at your peril. The best way to dump your visitor is to upset her ability to easily navigate.

So you’re an internet expert at getting around and recognizing standards. However, this knowledge doesn’t mean you know everything about websites. Sneakily, it tends to make us think we know it all, since we’re on sites every day. We form opinions about websites based on our own aesthetic preferences, but this is not science.  And it takes science and testing data to build a great website.

Did you know that vast amounts of testing data exist which have revealed the best color for a ‘buy now’ button? Go to the Target site. It’s not random. They tested every color in the rainbow to find which color sold more items. Target and other e-retailers rely on data, not aesthetics, to drive their choices. Data drives revenue. That’s the science to optimizing: test results.

Aesthetic opinions of the uniformed layman are the great crippler of websites. Aesthetic preferences are just opinions. You may think you’re morally right believing that a blue site is inherently more attractive than a green palette. But you’re not right unless data and testing tells you so.  You only know which is best when you A/B test a blue versus green site and see what your traffic does. It’s easy to discern when you have a high bounce rate – meaning, people bail immediately upon entering. But what if you have lots of blue site users who click through to your shopping but don’t buy. Maybe fewer green site visitors stay, but more buy. This is what data analysis can do for a company. You let your visitors vote and their aesthetic prevails. Makes a bunch more sense than battling it out between marketing and sales in the conference room doesn’t it?

When we design a website we make certain recommendations based on our industry and testing knowledge. We’re not trying to just make a beautiful site, but one which performs because of the user psychology and testing results we understand. We’re going to abide by web conventions because otherwise you’re slitting your throat. We’re also going to suggest things you may be lukewarm about because you have a certain aesthetic vision.

Example: Flash websites. Oh, how we tried to proselytize against those! Oh, how we pleaded no! no! to clients who wanted them. They were bedazzled by the lure and visual impact of Flash and had no clue that Flash doesn’t index in search engines. So if you have an all Flash site, you’ve just made your site invisible and will have zero organic ranking.

Today Flash is used as an embed, an element of a site which functions wonderfully and there are things you can now do to tailor your Flash to index better, though it’s still a bit imperfect. And remember, no Apple product can see Flash. You’re flushing all those iPad and iPhone users.

This is the stuff we know about. Likely, you don’t know about it. That’s why you’re not building your own site. You don’t code, you don’t script, you don’t know search engines. And we’re not experts in your business. So please trust that our advice is always based in data, not opinion, and represents your best user scenario while at the same time balancing aesthetic concerns.

We’ll listen to all your ideas and then give our assessment as to whether it’s in your best interest. As internet experts, our view of your best interest is getting you traffic and keeping them on your site to engage with your content and take action. We don’t support our opinions by arguing aesthetics, but with data and that’s really the difference you should be looking for when you engage someone to architect and build your site and do your SEO. It’s not about fluffy pretty stuff. It’s about functionality, usability and the science of web interaction.

Say you’re a rug boutique. You built an eCommerce back end, which was expensive. But no one buys your rugs.  When you Google “Aubusson rug” or “red Persian rug 5 x 7″ you see  other websites, not your own.  How do you get that placement? How did they do it?

They’ve optimized their websites. That means that they created specific pages with great content and all sorts of signals built into the code of the page that tell the search engine, Hey! This page is about Aubusson rugs. And not only that, but blue Aubusson rugs in particular, one of your top sellers offline.

The search engine can only deliver results that tally up with the keyword your buyer has typed in the search box. The engine finds the pages that best seem to indicate blue Aubusson rugs and returns them to the user. The engine is not alive; it can’t look at your pretty design and decide oh, that’s nice, great pix, let’s use this page. It relies on text and other signals from your site.  The process of search engine optimizing lures engines to your site, and then tells the engine in the language it understands how relevant your content is to the given search.

Now they tell you.

So you want to rank for all kinds of things, different colored rugs, different types of rugs, different materials for rugs – wow, once you start thinking of all the terms people could use, it’s kind of overwhelming. Now you’re convinced that you need to do SEO and get some rankings so you can get some sales. But you don’t know how to buy this service.

You’re not going to do it in-house; nobody knows how. So you have to find a provider, but it’s confusing. Some of the hourly rates the SEOs post on line are terrifying – $350 an hour is common. You have no idea how long this service takes to provide. You need an estimate, just like if you needed a car repair.

Definitely get some estimates. Some companies offer flat rate SEO – they’ll do your whole site for a set price. Some offer your budget help by telling you to focus only on particular pages. Some say they’ll do your on-page SEO but you also need off-page SEO. (Why, oh why did the web designer not tell you this?)

They’re right – you need both. It’s a two part service and both parts need the other part to function properly. Off page SEO creates links to your website, which drive people to your on-page optimized pages. If those pages are no good, you won’t get any links. If you don’t have a lot of links, you’re not going to rank regardless of how great your pages are.

The way to buy SEO is as a capital investment. It’s like shelling out for new hardware, or a new laser printer.  It’s an I.T. cost and a marketing cost.  But unlike many of your investments, SEO allows you to track your ROI from Day 1 through the miracle of online data reporting which tells you precisely what searches you’re ranking for, your position, and how many people came in to your site and bought rugs – down to the exact keyword they used.

You inhabit the mind of your consumer in a way you can’t replicate in your store unless you sat the customer down and interviewed him. With SEO reporting built in to your site you’ll know where your traffic comes from – search engine, referral, or type-in traffic – what they’re looking at, where they bail out, whether or not they come to your site and turn around and leave (called bounce rate).

It’s a constant feedback mechanism which allows you to learn enormous amounts of information and tailor your website accordingly. That’s the important part: it’s actionable data.

The vast majority of small to mid-size businesses are just getting started with SEO. Their sites are mature now, having been online for over a decade, but not producing sales, customers, or leads. They sit there looking beautiful and function like glossy brochures. And that’s all they are. Ghost ships that are not optimized for your business keywords and provide no ranking position and little traffic except brand-specific traffic.

Your first capital expense will be the on-page SEO of your site, which includes focusing the content tightly around your desired terms, and is generally done just once. You should look for a flat rate quote and find out how many pages of your site will be included.  Keep in mind that there is currently no standardized program of SEO; most practitioners do it slightly differently. Make sure to find out what they intend to touch on your site – get a list of the adjustments they’ll make.

The SEO company should interview you to learn about your top terms and should conduct research into the volume of those searches online so you have some data of how many people are out there (volume) looking for your product or service.

The second expense is off page SEO, or link development. That’s likely to be a monthly retainer fee. Once your pages are super relevant, it’s the time to build links. Most SEOs can quickly open up some software and tell you how many links your competitor has, versus your site. This gap shows how far you need to go in order to rank similarly. If you have 500 links, and she has 700, that’s a pretty easy gap. But some companies have a 100 links and their competition has 100,000. That’s a much bigger issue to tackle (but we have some concepts to help you make up the gap).

The off page SEO should run at least three months and you’ll begin seeing results in month 1, but typically you need about six months for the links to propagate. Your traffic should spike as you get more links and are seen as a more authoritative site. Your SEO person can show you where you ranked when you started, and then point out all the new queries that you’re ranking for.

These metrics help you measure your investment. Nothing is greater than tracking a “conversion” – a lead, action, or sale. This is where you dramatically see your SEO work linked by data that shows people have purchased as a direct result of your content focused SEO. Once you have your “blue Aubusson” page up and running and start getting sales, that new revenue, which you wouldn’t have had, is your ROI.

Do SEO once and it repays you forever. Do SEO on a regular basis (link building) and you’ll find yourself a very happy website owner.

Friendly means a bunch of different things, but mostly it means functional. First your website should be architecturally impeccable so as to not cause any problems with a search engine indexing your site (spidering it and adding any updates to the index).  Too many child levels in navigation is not a great idea, so try to keep your site flat and broad. A search robot won’t go deeper than three levels usually, so don’t add content that you care about in a deep position.

Your code should validate. A lot of designers are a bit lazy about checking that, but you don’t want any warnings or errors. Everything should be best-practice labeled as well – use alt text, and every tag you can. Embed Flash elements, don’t design in it.

Ask your SEO person what their plan will be.  See if they ask not just what terms they should be targeting, but all about your business so they can offer you ideas that you’ve never thought of before. Ask them what kind of keyword research they do. Do they believe in long tail (niche) keywords or go for top volume? Or a mix of both? Do they invite you to suggest the keywords you’d like to rank for?

Ask about their On Page SEO and what it entails.They should provide a plan that targets no more than 5 keywords per page and includes a mix of URL, tags, content, alt-text and technical suggestions. If they’re really good, the SEO will have some thoughts on your conversion process. What’s conversion? Ask your SEO.

Ask about their linkbuilding services – is it a flat rate per link or a monthly retainer?  Do the links come from quality sites or junk directories? How will they benchmark their efforts? Will you have login privileges for online data collection tools like Google Analytics?  What about maintenance?

Ask your prospective SEO firm if they have their own tricks (they should) and if they ever use black hat tactics (they shouldn’t).  Avoid wizards of the dark side! They can get your site banned (removed from the search engine results).  It can take months to make it out of exile, and you’ll likely never regain your former position.

Just a few questions to ask your SEO strategist.

So how in the world as the buyer can you make sure that you don’t get taken? Great question, especially since a lot of people who do get taken don’t even realize it. Taken can mean grossly overpaying, or getting a functionally deficient website such as an all Flash site (which is out of the box invisible to search engines). The best place to start is by getting a referral from someone who is happy with their site and enjoyed working with the designer. A one-person shop can be comforting because you will always work with the same person, but individual designers can also be problematic. They are balancing multiple clients and often it’s hard to get their attention for an emergency.

You’ll pay the least when working with a freelancer. Make sure you look at their online portfolio carefully, and understand that if you don’t see something there that you like, probably this person won’t be able to create it for you. Many sites aren’t coded from scratch these days, but stay away from companies that offer you a choice of templates and host for you. You absolutely must have your own hosting, so that you control your website.

You should host your own website for multiple reasons, most importantly because a hosting account is the keys to your car. You don’t want anyone else in control of this if your income is tied to your site; you need full control. Situations where designers host websites often end in tears – you don’t need that hassle.

Most important things to discuss:

1. Updates. Do you want to update your site yourself or not? (If so, this will cost extra but can be a great thing. Your designer will build an interface or set you up with software or a content management system like WordPress or Joomla).

2. Expandability. Can they help you grow? Ask them for ideas about monetizing your site. Advertising and pay per click campaigns might be part of the picture. Talk to your designer about additional ways to squeeze money from your online presence.

3. Design rounds. How many free designs will you receive initially? Usually you should expect to see at least 2 concepts. Once you choose a design, how many rounds of input on the design will you get? Will the designer include a logo for you or will you provide your own?

Those are just a couple of things to consider when you’re shopping for a developer to design your website. And don’t forget to ask about SEO! It should be done with every site build, but commonly designers don’t tell you this.  Make sure to ask your designer to recommend someone who does SEO specifically.

The big tactic in link spam is fawning before the site owner and engaging in ridiculous flattery to get that post comment approved. And – guess what? – it’s hard to resist! Your own vanity can do you in.  It can be hard to discern what is link spam and what is a real comment. Uh, it’s typically ALL spam.  Here’s a sampling of just a few of this week’s fulsome commentary….bad English is one way to figure out you’re not dealing with an actual reader.

Submitted on 2010/03/02 at 7:01am
Nice post! These are vital things to stay in mind, it’s usually easy to forget about the easy things after you get consumed by a project.

Submitted on 2010/03/02 at 5:54am
It’s been a while since I browse a really glorious blog post. Not only well written but relevant. Congratulations.

Submitted on 2010/02/28 at 7:30pm
Your blog is very interested. I am to find for website how your site, and it is good.

Submitted on 2010/02/28 at 12:26pm
Great Blog! I have a similar site, and get a lot of spam. Do you face such problems? Can you please recommend some steps I take to combat spam. Thanks.

Submitted on 2010/02/25 at 3:59pm
Your blog is very interested. I am to find for website how your site, and it is good.  (they came back for another crack)

Again, approving these comments means you are outlinking to spam sites (low value, junk sites) and these outbound links can tip the balance on your own good link profile. You should ONLY link out to high quality sites to associate yourself with valuable web properties. It’s just one of many positive signals you can send an engine to help your own search engine placement.

Alas, you are probably up against the dreaded link spammer. Not that your piece wasn’t great, it’s just that they prey on sites with comment moderators who are asleep at the wheel. The commentary will go something like this: “Wow, I am awed by your masterful post on the weavil (sic)! Did you know that you can make ten billion dollars in the forex market? Thanks for your genius post!” There’s either a link embedded in the post or the name is hyperlinked or you’ve got a field where they can drop their URL. There are different ways they play it. An appeal to your vanity: “Saw your post on Reddit. Great link.” Or perhaps something is wrong with your site and their guise is one of helpfulness. “Your site isn’t displaying properly in my (insert name) browser. You may want to look into that.”

While tempting to jack up your comments on a lonesome post, don’t fall for it. Why? Because it can hurt you. Approving spam comments willy nilly will mean your site can have an overload of outbound links to bad neighborhoods: known spam or phishing sites, banned servers, farms, etc. Don’t think Google doesn’t know because Big Daddy knows all. This will tarnish your own sterling reputation within the Google algorithm.  You may see rankings impacted if you cross a certain threshold.

Moral of the story: Link out to quality sites and don’t let the spammers overrun the kingdom.

Welcome to the bizarre conundrum of the ugly site.  Eye and click tracking studies find people make instantaneous judgments about the quality or trustworthiness of a site in fractions of a second. For some people, it seems that ugly = trustworthy. Making a site too slick (in some instances) may interfere with a positive first impression because the user perceives sophistication as a negative.

Maybe people suspect a slick site of trying to manipulate them, or screw them. Maybe the mentality is, that’s a big corporation and I’m going to stay on guard. Maybe they are too intimidated to ask for more information because they think their business is too small for the site to be interested.

I have seen a downright fugly site just trounce a nationwide brand selling the same thing. Why?? Generally speculating….because this is much of what SEO is about, spawning ridiculous theories and then testing them….it might be that the user feels a connection to the humanness that is implied by an ugly site.

The interesting question from there is, what percentage of people might be subject to this effect….and might it be large enough to skew results toward the ugly versus glossy? If 95% of visitors don’t care, but 5% do, then measuring the preference would allow you to eke out a higher conversion rate. What if more than 5% care? Would you consider building a hideous site? If you say no, is it vanity over…sanity?

I have one very ugly site that ranks incredibly well. It’s hard to make an ugly site on purpose but it can be done with the right talent. The objective is to make it seem too homely to be untrustworthy, too pitiful to deny it a much needed sale, too openly honest with its pleadingly terrible graphics. Did you know that the number one tactic of psychopaths is an appeal to….your pity? You’re far more likely to be conned if you first feel sorry and superior to, the person doing the conning. It’s a matter of allaying fears. I believe the same principle may be operating with ugly sites. Not that they are purposely conning you. In probably 99% of transactions all is well. But phishing sites can also look homemade, the one real downside that I can see to the ugly vibe.

Most ugly sites are naturally ugly, versus  intentionally so. Still I did once work on a site where our objective was to seem very bush league and fly under the radar. We had a blast sitting around coming up with ways to make it look handmade.  But handmade as IF it was striving to be good. Making the graphics off kilter, mocking up old banners that invite you to hit a moving animal with a mallet, speed up your computer links, a color palette that didn’t match. And a series of other tricks I won’t go into. It was really fun.

Ugly sites work really well for ecommerce that’s niche, as well as niche information (such as conspiracy sites). A brazenly template-looking ecommerce store solution with its simple grid format and in the box fonts would be something to consider. The French have a saying, jolie-laide, meaning beautiful ugly. That about covers it.

Actually Dave promised to write three songs about the incident and post videos. Video #1 reached viral velocity this fall after uploading in July.  It’s a classic tale of taking on the Man and winning. It helps if your retaliation video features talent – as his does. But Carroll also clearly had some web smarts.

The video is a catchy song called “United Breaks Guitars.”  The name of the song/video features two important keywords: United and Guitars. He could have sung about My Bad Luck Airline Story. But you capture viewers from what people search for…keywords with volume….so why not make music with an eye to traffic?

To date the video has had over 7 million views, and United is said to have contacted Carroll about a settlement in return for taking down the video. “Good luck with that pal,” Carroll is said to have responded. Haha, just makes the story juicier doesn’t it, whether true or not. So let’s take the campaign apart from what can be found on the web. Step 1, create video and post to Youtube. Now what?

Emails & Initial Comments

My first awareness of this story came via an email and I would definitely hope that Carroll was behind that initial roll-out.

There are 4 band members in the band Sons of Maxwell and that means there are 4 networks plus their significant others’.   The first step in awareness would be a simple email with a link to the video and a bit of tantalizing background on the story. Using personal networks probably garnered the first couple hundred views and comments – all positive. Did you know that studies show the first few comments on any piece of content are the most critical? It turns out humans are a bit lemming like and comments trend in the direction of the first postings. So when posting your content, try to control initial comments.

If each member of an initial network of say 8-10 committed individuals sends to 100 of their friends and shares on Facebook – just that, you’re knocking on a roll-out of 1,000. If you get just 5% partisans who pass it on to their network that’s 50 more people doing your work for you. But likely participation is much higher, since the second round of senders would be able to say they are FRIENDS of the hero of the story so there is personal recognition and validating in it for them. The third round of email senders could say, hey my friend is friends with this guy…help him out…and so on.

Keywords

One of the smart things in this campaign – ok, genius – was using the brand name Taylor Guitar in the song and in the tag of the video. Guitar players are picky about guitars and they’re uh, musicians, who are social media literate and  LOVE TO SHARE MUSIC. What a great core group of people to engage by enraging them at someone’s Taylor being trashed. So they pass the video on to their friends.

Content Submission

A little sleuthing with a “united breaks guitars” G-search reveals the video was uploaded July 6th to Youtube.

On July 7th, the story, video and lyrics were posted at The Consumerist, a ripoff site.  A great way to propagate the story. A simple email to the upper right hand corner tips@domainhere.com should have done it. They bit. Remember, sites are desperate for good content. If you serve it up, they’ll eat it.

Also on July 7th, the LA Times had a blog post on the story, reporting in the first 24 hours the song had 400-odd hits, not earth shattering or newsworthy but those newspaper blogs need content. Who alerted them? The writer mentioned that United was already on it and quoted a representative who said they’d contacted Mr. Carroll to make it right. Perhaps a press release was sent to a number of newspaper blogs. That’s what I’d do.

Next Huffington Post had the story on July 9. Facebook, retweeting, diggs and other avenues were used to continue generating momentum.

On July 24th, Internet Hitler weighed in and I think at that point you have a certified hit on your hands.

On January 11, I am here writing about it, showing the huge potential for proliferation (and people using your success).

On-Page Factors

When you visit the Youtube page, what do you see? A bunch of interconnected links or what I think of as a matrix effect.

• Band site URL rolls before video starts  (REASON: secondary address outside of Youtube to sell, inform, etc)
• iTunes buy it pop up (SALES)
• Sons of Maxwell video channel (ENABLES SUBSCRIBERS, BUILDING DATABASE OF PARTISANS)
• Numerous links in the subscribe area to 1)the backstory  2)the first song  3) a SECOND song just posted as the viral is going through the roof
• Tags: united airlines  broken guitar  sons of maxwell  dave carroll  UA  baggage claim  lost luggage  consumer complaints  damage claim  taylor guitar (These tags reveal targets – people who are enraged at their United experience, Taylor lovers, people trying to learn about the band. Tags are like a honey pot capturing device.)
• Twitter link (Link propagation)
• Personal video on Dave Carroll’s website explaining the story and declining United’s settlement (This is beautiful image management, it says – I’m just a nice, regular guy who intends no harm and holds no grudges)

Managing a campaign like this takes patience – roughly seven months and the energy to write/produce the songs and videos. You’ve got to have a great backstory. The fortuitous breaking of the Taylor provided an incident for exploitation – people want to see the little guy go up against Goliath and win – and Sons of Maxwell was smart enough to realize they had something: a story that would really engage other people. They had the talent to back it up, unlike the Balloon Family. The charming videos are low cost but high quality and with an artfully naive presentation that’s both ironic and still almost believable. Who knows how far they’ll go? They’ve separated themselves from the baying hordes of musicians desperate for attention and that is commendable. Are there better bands? Probably. But that’s not the point.

Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&NR=1

Meanwhile,  I am using the same keywords as Dave did so hopefully some Taylor loyalists will be along shortly. It’s basically tag teaming. Thanks Dave!