For those of you who don’t know, I’ve recently made the switch from the agency side to what some might call “the dark side” or client side. The post below is a reflection of my decision to make the jump. I’m hoping that both long time readers, as well as newcomers can find something they can use when deciding to make this decision on their own.

Let me give you a bit of background. I’ve been working at Slack Barshinger for the past three years. I started there in February of 2007  and it was and has been a fantastic job until the day I left. I was able to work on clients too numerous to name them all, but a few included Google, Fellowes, ArcelorMittal, Dow Corning, AEM, SourceForge, Tellabs, and Diebold. I was able to take on as much responsibility for projects as I wanted and had the freedom to test and try as much as I wanted including tactics, strategies, tools, and processes. Each time learning something new about our internal structure, my clients, and my own strengths and weaknesses. And recently, things have really started to take off, so much so that we had to hire several people to keep up the demand. In spite of all of this, there came a point about a few months ago when I found out about a local business, JC Whitney which changed the whole plan.

JC Whitney is an automotive aftermarket retailer based in Chicago who sells both in catalogs as well as online. JC Whitney, part of the larger Whitney Automotive Group, was looking for a search and social media manager who could come on and support their organic search efforts as well as grow their social media presence online. Now, being from Detroit, this position both intrigued me, but also caused some consternation. Primarily, the reason I left Michigan to move to Chicago was the plethora of opportunities available for employment, but secondarily, it was to avoid affiliations with the automotive industry which has decimated the Michigan economy for the last decade and, from what I assume, will continue to do so for the coming one as well.

Having been at Slack Barshinger for three years, I was extremely comfortable in my surroundings, the processes in place, and how to work in my overall team. I met some of the best friends I’ll ever have and I was able to learn from some of the sharpest people I may ever meet. So why did I decide to make the switch? Well, there are a few reasons.

Hours & Weekends
The agency life doesn’t lend itself to 9-5 or Monday through Friday. When a client says “Can I have this point of view tomorrow?” and it’s a choice of getting them the point of view when requested or they start shopping around for another agency who can get it for them tomorrow, you deliver. This means giving up personal time with friends, family, loved ones, or just your own time to decompress or pursue interests outside of work. With the recent passing of both my grandmother and grandfather, the priorities in my life have definitely changed. And as I prepare for my wedding in July, I expect that other things will continue to change as well. I’m not saying that I’m going to become an old man all of a sudden, but when presented with the realities of an agency lifestyle, I’ve made a decision that it’s not for me right now. There may come a day down the road when I yearn for the run, run, run lifestyle associated with the agency world or an opportunity may present itself that is too good to pass up, but I think I need to take a break right now for my own mental and physical health.

Different Experiences
One of the biggest reasons, if the not the biggest, I decided to take this position is because it affords me an entirely new set of opportunities. First, it’s business to consumer. I’ve had a bit of experience doing B2C, but that was a few years ago and I feel that I’ve grown substantially as a marketer since then. Doing business to business marketing, there are just certain types of projects you’ll never get to work on or buying behaviors you may never see. Second, it’s entirely e-commerce. Again, something I’ve dabbled in from time to time with various clients, but this is a whole new ball game. The scale of the site itself and the amount of topic areas to be monitored and optimized is a whole different ballgame. And lastly, it’s client side. It’s definitely one thing to write a point of view as to what the client should or should not do and walk away. It’s entirely another to actually receive the POV, digest it, add to it, summarize it, and then live with the business decisions associated with it. Granted, I’m going to still need the subject matter expertise that comes from the client-agency relationship, but for lack of a better metaphor, the shoe is now on the other foot.

It’s automotive, but not really
Yes, JC Whitney is an auto parts company at its heart, but as it shifts gears from a catalog company to an e-commerce machine, it’s becoming more and more savvy everyday, taking all the best tools, tactics, and thoughts from all sectors and combining them into a…well oiled machine (sorry). But really, when you look at it from a macro level, it doesn’t really matter whether JC Whitney is selling ice cream or auto parts, the search and social media fundamentals are fairly similar.

It just felt right
And at the end of the day, my decision to go client side just felt right. After meeting with the folks at JC Whitney, hearing how they talk about marketing and what projects they had waiting for me, everything just clicked. I had a fantastic time at Slack Barshinger and will always think fondly of my time at the agency, but at some point, you have to rock the boat a bit and get outside of your comfort zone. I would recommend this type of evaluation to anyone. Think about your current employment situation. Think about the things you want to accomplish in your career and think about what experiences you want or need to make that next step. What would be the next logical step for you? That was the point I was at and that’s really why I made this decision.

Lighthearted point of note
And through all of this, I’m trying to not turn into the client everyone hates (pictured above). I’m trying to be understanding and reasonable with all of my agency partners and I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.  I know I wanted it when I was on the other end of the phone call. Apparently, the stereotype is that people who move from agencies to clients are the worst clients ever. But from anyone who knows me personally, I probably couldn’t be the worst client ever even if I tried.

So what happens from here? Well, I’ll continue to update this blog with my own thoughts about marketing both online and off, but with a slightly different twist. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

In case you’ve been living under a rock during 2009,  it was the year of Twitter. Twitter and “tweets” were all over the place. Many marketers were just trying to get their feet wet, while others jumped in wholeheartedly and even created national campaigns around it. At least until the next hot thing, it appears that Twitter is it for now. For many B2C, as well as B2B, marketers it was easy to setup a Twitter account and post a few things here and there, but after a few weeks or months they began to wonder:

• Am I reaching the right audience?
• How do I extend my audience?
• What are some quick ways, aside from giving away “the farm”, to grow my audience?

This post is specifically around those questions. Here are three quick ideas you can use to grow your Twitter following quickly and relevantly.

Media Publications
The first place to look is to existing trade publications who have migrated to Twitter. Over the last several years, traditional and offline media has really been taking it on the chin due to the rise of online. As a result, many of them have taken to social media and online venues as a way to stoke the fires of their online publications. Whether you are looking to reach teens and tweens (i.e. TigerBeat), yacht enthusiasts (i.e. Sailing Magazine) or professional contractors (i.e. Contractor Magazine), there are offline or newly created online publications on Twitter. All you have to do is click on their “Followers” link and presto, you have a captive audience for your products or services. If they are interested in what these publications have to say, they are probably also interested in what your company has to say. So what publications are important to your industry? Even if they don’t have a Twitter account setup, you might find people who are regularly readers, just talking about it too. See for yourself.

Competitors
If you’re behind the curve a bit and your competitors are already out in front, use that to your advantage. They’ve already done some of the leg work establishing their accounts, following people in the industry, perhaps even advertising the fact that they are on Twitter. That’s great for you! Now all you have to do is check out who is following them and cherry pick the ones that are applicable to you. For example, if I’m a local pizzeria in Chicago, I should look at other pizza places in Chicago (i.e. Rosati’s Pizza, Gino’s East, etc.) The same is true for nationwide or global brands as well, both B2C as well as B2B. In the case of B2B, your competitors may not be that established, but it’s still worth checking out and it will vary sector by sector. For instance, if I’m Case Construction, you better believe I should be looking at Caterpillar’s Twitter following on a regular basis. Those are most likely prospective customers, or existing Caterpillar customers I might be able to switch over.

Listening to the Ecosystem
And just because you can’t identify any media publications or your competitors don’t exist on Twitter, doesn’t mean you are lost. Assuming the audience you are trying to reach is on Twitter, you have a captive audience waiting with for relevant information and here’s where you can chime in. Just go to any number of local or global Twitter search applications and throw in a few keywords which are applicable to your industry. Start with industry exclusive keywords and broaden your search from there:

Local (US):

• NearbyTweets
• Twitter Search
• Twellowhood

Global:

• Twitter Search
• GeoFollow
• Radian6 (paid)

Once you’ve identified who is talking about your relevant topics, make sure to follow them. And don’t worry – if they don’t follow you back, it’s not the end of the world. At the very least, they will check out your profile, see what you have to say, and move on. You’ve shown them that you are interested in what they have to say and that could be enough to turn them into a future customer.

And it wouldn’t be much of a blog post if I too didn’t also try to grow my Twitter audience. I’m jeffwoelker on Twitter, in case you’re not already following me. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed these three quick tips. If you have additional ideas, please let me know in the comments.

Image courtesy of jez`

As you may already know from my previous post, SES Chicago is rapidly approaching and the agenda has several very interesting sessions lined up. One of the sessions I’m particularly interested in is “Selling Search to the C-Suite”, which has been an issue in previous years. I think search has approached a point now though where it should seem obvious that companies should have some presence in search. However, even today, we still have clients we need to convince that search is the right venue for them. I had the chance to interview Russ Mann, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, of Covario, who is part of the panel on Day 3 on the trials, tribulations, and some tips on how to sell search more effectively to those higher up the marketing food chain.

Perhaps as a result of the recession, online has taken off even faster than many expected, due to its lower costs and higher measurability. Do you feel like selling search to the C-suite is any easier now that online and specifically search is so much more widely used and accepted?

Selling search to the C-suite as a concept is most definitely easier.  We heard CEOs of Fortune 500 clients refer to needing “a Google strategy.”  No one debates the importance or the ROI of search.  The challenge now is to make search more strategic.  For many CEOs, CFOs and CMOs, if they have one “in-house search person” or if they believe “their agency is doing it,” then they are satisfied that they have checked the box.  The C-suite now needs to understand that search represents the purest voice of the customer in aggregate, and represents not just attitudinal behavior (what they say they’ll do)- it’s behavioral data (what they’ll actually do).  The problem is that too many search marketers are overly eager to expound on the fascinating details of SEM and SEO, while the C-level exec’s eyes glaze over.  C-level execs care about big picture, direction, business impact and “moving the needle.”  That’s the next wave of enterprise class search marketing.

Are there any industries you think have embraced search marketing more than others? Any idea why?

Originally the etailers and SMBs embraced search, because they are early adopters for anything that works!  Then we saw retailers and more direct-response type models (travel, insurance, mortgages, consumer financial services etc) embrace search, especially given the economy of the past few years.  More recently, we see the more traditional CPG, branded manufacturers, B2B service providers embracing search, in particular SEO, because they have come to understand the accountability and relevance to their business models.

In many industries, search budgets are still low in comparison to other mature channels (TV, print, radio, etc.). Why do you think that is?

In my blogs “The Rise of the GenX CMO” and “The Agency of the Future”,   I described the historical and macro circumstances that got us to where we are.  The Baby Boomer CMOs, who grew up in the age of TV and Ad Agencies, are still “in the chair”- although they are gradually retiring or moving on in the next 5 years as their tenure has shortened and CEOs and CFOs demand more accountability, more quickly.  The new GenX CMO, who grew up with computers in their schools, are more numerate, financially savvy, fast paced and demanding.  While consumer tastes and media consumption habits have changed, the Baby Boomer CMO and their Agencies remained in the old paradigm.  As the GenX CMOs get promoted, however, they will radically shift the spend and balance for digital, including search, versus the mature channels.

Search marketing reports are often filled to the brim with data, which can make a CMO cross eyed. Can you recommend some tools that can help the data junkies make their reports more visually palatable?

Of course I am going to recommend Covario solutions.  In general, as advice to folks who are in the trenches of any discipline (not just search). In my blog on how to get budget, staff and promotions, I recommended:

• Use charts, not data tables
• Answer WHY things happened, not just “what happened”
• Suggest multiple options for what to do next, and give estimates of what might happen with each option, and Why you think that
• Think in orders of magnitude (left of decimal thinking), not in terms of precision (right of decimal thinking)—execs want to “MOVE THE NEEDLE!”
• Similarly, directionality and velocity are more important than precision- up or down and how fast are much more important than having perfect data

Finally, what tools do you think CMO’s and search marketers will need in the coming years as the search industry matures and the landscape becomes more competitive?

Those are two very different constituents with very different needs.  Executives need visualization and recommendation solutions like dashboards and predictive analytics at the macro scale.  Search marketers in both SEO and SEM need easy visualizations of their very complex data that they can “send up the chain,” but then they also need highly granular, transactional-level data and tools to execute on daily tasks and make themselves more efficient.  Both groups will need solutions that play across media types (display, social, video, mobile, etc) as attribution modeling and multi-channel analytics become more pervasive and discipline experts are forced to synthesize their results and play better together.   These types of solutions are still in early innings, with many folks like Covario in the hunt to provide best-of-breed solutions to clients.

Disclosure: I have not been financially compensated for this post, although I have received a free press pass to cover SES Chicago.

What makes a website inherently “findable” these days? Is it information architecture, web design principles, an understanding of search engines, usable interfaces, or a combination of all of these?

It’s a combination. Findability requires a holistic perspective that balances engineering, marketing, and design. I often invite web managers to ask the following three questions. Can people find your site? Can people find their way around your site? And, can people find your content and services despite your site? Success in all three areas is important and can’t be achieved without paying attention to the ways that code, content and structure work together to influence usability and findability.

Either using the items listed above, or adding your own, what is the most important aspect to think of when designing a website to ensure it is easy to use and understand?

Empathy for the user is the key to good design. Only by understanding user behavior and psychology within a particular context of use can we create products, services, and experiences that help users achieve goals, complete tasks, and find what they need. That’s why user research methods such as design ethnography and usability testing are so important. Of course, we must also know enough about the technology to see what’s possible. Often, it’s not enough to optimize for ease and efficiency. We must also strive for desirability and aim for innovation.

Do you feel like Flash, AJAX, and other highly visual, but non-text based interfaces, are making the web more or less usable or findable?

It depends. Great teams employ visual interfaces and rich interaction to create engaging user experiences without sacrificing usability and findability. Unfortunately, most teams aren’t great and quickly get in over their heads.

Are there any companies who you think really exemplify “findability” in the way they create online or offline experiences?

Other than Google, which is too obvious to mention, there’s no single company that comes to mind. What’s exciting right now is the proliferation of ideas and inventions across platforms and media. On the iPhone, for instance, there are some great niche applications like SitOrSquat (for finding public toilets when you’ve gotta go) and Nearest Tube (for finding the London Underground when you’re aboveground). Location-based services and augmented reality are particularly intriguing at the moment.

Where do you see search engines and other meta data engines in the next five years?

A key point we make in our new book, Search Patterns (available from O’Reilly Media in January 2010), is the need to think outside the box. We must continue to make incremental improvements (e.g., better interfaces and algorithms) while simultaneously pursuing radical innovation. This requires thinking more expansively about goals and strategy. Twitter and the Wikipedia were not conceived as search solutions, but as knowledge management innovations they have both transformed the search landscape. Often, the biggest changes emerge not from the center but from outside the category entirely. We all need to work on our peripheral vision.

If there’s one thing you hope people walk away with after listening to your keynote address at SES Chicago, what do you hope it will be?

I hope folks leave with a sense of urgency and enthusiasm. My goal is to inspire people to make search better.

Disclosure: I have not been financially compensated for this post, although I have received a free press pass to cover SES Chicago.

I’ve often used this blog as a knowledge repository for myself, as well as many of my colleagues. Providing lists of great sites, or tools I think are useful as a search or digital marketer. Below I’ve compiled 60 links which I think are relevant and useful to search marketers at any stage in their career – whether their just starting out or they’ve been doing this for years. I tried to make it a mix of both SEO and SEM/PPC sites, tools and analysts, but I think in the end it may have swayed more to the SEO side. Mostly as I think SEM is one of those things that people have all their own tools to do the analysis. I’d love to make this a working list, so please feel free to add additional tools, links, blogs, analysts or useful sites you think others may or may not know about. This is by no means all the sites out there, but I think it’s pretty representative.

Development / Browser Tools:
These are several of the tools I’ve used over the years to make sure my site is valid and indexable, as well as measuring optimization over time.

• HTML Validator
• CSS Validator
• Link Checker
• Robots.txt Generator
• SEOBook Firefox SEO Plug-in
• SEOBook Rank Checker
• SEOQuake
• MozRank Checker
• Header Checker
• Site Link Checker
• SEO Tools
• Dave Naylor’s Search Tools
• Yahoo Link Checker

Keyword Research Tools:
Below is a list of keyword research tools I have used in the past or have heard anecdotally from others that these are viable tools. In the end, it the tools you have the most confidence in that will give you the best results.

• Google Keyword Tool
• Google Insights for Search
• Google Trends
• WordTracker
• Keyword Discovery
• KeywordSpy
• Keyword Competitor
• Wordstream
• Visual Thesaurus

Industry News:
Below are some industry news sites that if you don’t already have in your RSS reader, you should.

• SearchEngineLand
• SearchEngineWatch
• SearchEngineJournal
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Marketing Pilgrim
• Google’s Blog
• Yahoo Search Blog
• Bing Search Blog
• Sphinn

Industry Analysts:
Below is a list of some of the industry analysts I have found most interesting and/or accurate over the years.

• Matt Cutts
• SEOMoz Google Search Engine Ranking Factors
• Webmasterworld
• TopRank Blog
• Dave Naylor’s Blog
• SEER Interactive Blog
• Econsultancy
• SEO Smarty
• Evolution of the Google Algorithm, 2009

Search Management Vendors:
Below is a list of search vendors that provide SEO, SEM/PPC management, or both.

• Acquisio
• Adgooroo
• Atlas
• Clickable
• Click Equations
• DoubleClick
• SearchIgnite
• Lyris HQ

Analytics Vendors:
Below are some analytics vendors I’ve either used in the past or had some experience with.

• Google Analytics
• Urchin
• Omniture
• Coremetrics
• WebTrends
• ClickTracks

Reporting & Visualization Vendors:
And last, but certainly not least, are several vendors which can help you better visualize datasets, outside of your existing analytics package.

• ThinkMap
• Actuate
• Tea Leaf
• Tableau
• Microstrategy
• Panopticon
• Crystal Reports

Image courtesy of L. Marie
Iconography provided by OneBit Free Web Icons

So the other day, I was having a meeting with a client and there happened to be another agency in the room. We began talking about paid search strategies in terms of whether to start with broad match keywords or exact match or a mix of the two. I can come up with reasoning for both, but it just depends on the situation.

When is it best to start with broad match?
I would equate broad match as the sledgehammer of keyword matching tools. It’ll definitely get the job done, but you might also bring in lots of impressions which aren’t necessarily applicable. Now, if you are new to paid search or just starting off a paid search campaign, this is a good place to start. If you have the budget flexibility, it might be good to just let a broad match campaign run for a short time frame, depending on volume, and then review the campaign analytics to see which words to  add to your negative keyword list. So let’s say you have a campaign running for a local car wash, you might advertise against:

• car wash
• car washes
• car washing

Well, since search engines don’t report what other keywords your ad was displayed for, you have to look at the site analytics to see what words to filter out. You might discover that you want to filter out words like  “equipment” or “movie” or dare I say, “bikini”, as they are driving traffic, but not relevant traffic and certainly not traffic interested in your business. Now this only applies if you (the marketer or marketing agency) can get access to the analytics. If you can’t get access, you might want to consider more targeted matching tools, like exact matching.

When is it best to start with exact match?
Now, exact matching is the scalpel of keyword matching tools. You’re going to get target exactly the right amount of keywords, but nothing more. I find that it’s almost too precise, if that’s possible. If we use our example above for the local car wash. If someone searches for “car wash”, our ad will appear, but if they search for “local car wash”, our ad will not. So if you were to use all exact matching, it would probably blow out your keyword list so that you have to include every conjugation, tense, singular and plural versions and numerous other versions of your keyword list: “local car wash”, “local car washing”, “neighborhood car washes”, “chicago car wash”, etc. etc. etc.. Now, if you are in a highly sensitive industry, such as finance, regulatory, or legal this may be extremely important. What if you are advertising against the broad match phrase “legal representation” and someone searches for “pro bono legal representation”? That’s a whole different ballgame in terms of your compensation structure. And if you have an extremely restricted budget, you might want to try exact match to get started and move up to broad match from there. And lastly, if you have no access to analytics, there’s no way to know how your ads are performing, beyond impressions, CPC, and click through rate. So in order to ensure you are providing internal or external clients the value they deserve, you might want to start with exact match. In this manner, you can be 100% sure of the keywords where your ad is displayed – not a penny more, not a penny less.

When is it best to start with both broad match and exact match?
Well, I don’t know that I’d ever suggest starting with both if you are new to the paid search game, but after a while you kind of get the hang of these things and you can get more advanced. And the more you begin to know about the content area, the more data you can get ahold of, and the more time you spend in that industry, the more savvy you will become about the subject matter and the way in which people refer to things online in your industry.

What about phrase matching?
So, I didn’t cover phrase matching as it’s one of those gray areas that I know a lot of search marketers only partially use. It’s kind of like broad matching and it’s kind of like exact matching, but in general, it can be more trouble than it’s worth. In general, I haven’t had a client that this performed better for them than using either broad, or exact, or a combination of the two, but I’m willing to listen if others have good experiences with or a case for when to use phrase matching as opposed to board or exact.

Anything I forgot? Have any other questions? Let me know if the comments.

A few days ago, I received my invitation to Google Voice.  As is my standard operating procedure with new technology like this, I signed up first and figured out a business application after a few days. Well, I’ve had some time to think about this and I’ve compiled 5 ways of how you can use Google Voice for your own business.

Setup an “office” in another city
So when I moved to Chicago, I didn’t change my cell phone number, as most people already knew what it was and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of updating it and possibly losing people in the process. As a result, I still have a (586) Detroit area code for my cell phone number. With the advent of Google voice, now all of a sudden, I have a local number to give people, without having to change over my cell phone. If I wanted to, I could use this for marketing purposes and “setup shop” in cities where I don’t necessarily have a business office yet. If you are a small business, or a larger business trying to setup shop in a new market and want local credibility – why not check out Google Voice? It allows you to get a local number, but still maintain your homebase of operations.

Filter calls while you’re on vacation
Say you are out of the office and only want to receive client calls on vacation. Well, now you can do that. With Google Voice’s filtering logic you can provide a voice greeting to fellow employees, vendors, or anyone else you just don’t want to talk to on your vacation. However, if  a client calls (or any other specified number) you can have it go straight to your cell phone while you’re sipping Mai Tai’s, I mean, if that’s what really you want.

Visual Voicemail
One of the big selling points for the iPhone and AT&T’s services is that they have visual voicemail, where you can move back and forth within a voicemail or even download it much as you can with any other audio file. Google Voice can also provide this functionality. You can download and share voicemails with whomever you like, regardless of what phone system or cell phone provider they have. This is also great for archival purposes.

Customized Greetings
This is actually a really cool/creepy feature. How cool would it be if you called someone’s phone and it said “Hey Jeff, sorry I missed your call. We’re really glad to have you as a new client. Leave me a message after the beep”? Well, you can now with Google Voice. Based on a specific number, you can leave a different voicemail message. See more here.

Call Recording
And just as cool/creepy is the fact that you can now record entire phone conversations to be saved for later use. This is great from a business standpoint for transcription later. Now you can just focus on the conversation at hand and jot down the details later. Again, Google has an entire video here.

Overall, I think this is a fantastic new tool Google has created. If you have a small, midsize, or even larger business, I would consider adding this to your existing phone system.

Let me know if there’s any issues you’ve seen so far or other uses you’ve come up with which are applicable to your own business in the comments.

Over the last few years, I’ve written extensively on how you should optimize your website. Changing page titles, alternate keyword research methodologies, redirecting domains, and eliminating duplicate content are just a few. But what happens when you get  a little out of control and start over optimizing your site.  How do you know when you’re doing too much SEO? Below I’ve included 5 tips to help you know when to say when.

Everyone should see the same content
One of the popular techniques that used to be used to trick search engines into giving undo ranking is called Content Cloaking. Content cloaking allows for you to detect the user agent arriving at the site (browser, search engine spider, etc.) and display one version of content for one user and a different version for another user. For example, I may present a page laden with keywords to the search engine, and a page with a few images to the user, thereby “tricking” the search engine into thinking I have much more content than I actually do. Of course, this is an ill-advised tactic and Google (and others) specifically outline that this is not allowed. Frankly, it seems like more work than it’s actually worth.

Now, you can present the content differently, based on user agent, but it still has to be nearly the same content. An example of this could be a visually intensive website that when a user visits via the browser they are presented with all the bells and whistles, but when they arrive via mobile phone, you can strip out excess images, flash elements, etc. thus tailoring the experience to the platform, but not for undo search ranking.

Your excellent content needs to make excellent sense, excellent
Another practice that still exists, but which is becoming more and more obvious is keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is the technique whereby a block of text, alt attribute, or HTML element is loaded to the hilt with the same keyword or phrase over and over.  It’s hard to define what constitutes keyword stuffing in terms of best practices, but if you read a piece of copy on a site and it sounds redundant or overly verbose or redundant, it’s probably the victim of keyword stuffing and could use some trimming. A best practice I use if you are optimizing a page on a site, is to mention the keyword phrase, at a minimum, in the page title, the page description, the H1 tag, and at least twice within the body copy. That way, you can be assured the point of the page comes across to both the user and search engines. Excellent.

Don’t hide anything from your users like this white text on a white background [highlight here]
Now keyword stuffing made it pretty obvious to search engines what you were trying to do. On the other hand, hidden text hides text from the user, but shows it to search engines. This could be done using JavaScript, CSS, or as simple as white text on a white background, as I’ve done above. This again is a no-no and, as a best practice, is frowned upon both from a search engine standpoint, but also user experience. By adding hidden text or hidden links, you are making your page less useful to your users overall and this may eventually result in your removal from Google’s index all together. On a personal note, any hidden text or links may not effect a user with “normal” vision, however, a user with impaired vision who may use a text based browser will instantly realize what is being done and may flag it to the Google content team. If you’re not HTML savvy, make sure to check your site with a text based browser like Lynx to ensure there isn’t a bunch of hidden text you don’t know about, or just to give you an idea of what your site looks like as all text.

Avoid buying links if you can, but if you do, do so at your own risk
It’s always tempting when you have an SEO campaign going and the results are not moving as fast as you’d like them to. “Why don’t we buy some links?” you might say. Well this is  a path that is both dangerous and can be a logistical nightmare. The process of buying links goes something like this: you identify a site you’d like to have a link from, you approach them directly or through a third party, the link is purchased and goes live, and your rankings go up, hopefully. Now, I know there are numerous link vendors out there, and I get approached on a regular basis to sell links on my site or for opportunities to buy links elsewhere, so I know it’s a thriving market, even if Google doesn’t approve. Regardless, I’ve heard both great things and horrible things through the grapevine of “Yeah – we buy links all the time and they work great” or “No, we’ve been banned for months because of buying links and won’t do so in the future”. Personally, I try to avoid this approach like the plague. It’s a hassle for me to manage and worry about, and if I ever got one of my clients sites banned in Google, I’d feel terrible (as well as having a potential lawsuit on my hands). So the bottom line is that I avoid it all together, but I know other SEO’s who hesitantly use it as part of their optimization program.

Develop relevant and interesting content and people will use it and link to it
Now I know this last one looks like a huge cop out and you’re saying to yourself – “Thanks Matt Cutts“, but I’m being totally serious. Once you optimize your content – the next step is to merchandise it. Share it with friends on Twitter or Facebook. See if there are relevant bloggers who’d like to share it. And if your content isn’t that bold or interesting, why not start a blog of your own and link to it from a niche piece of content? You can use the blog as a sounding board and promotional vehicle and punch up the topic a bit, while still maintaining your original content website structure. The keys here are relevancy, uniqueness, and how interesting your spin or take is, in relation to the market. Just because you are in a conservative industry, doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion or a personality. And just because you are in a very progressive industry, doesn’t mean you can’t do something unexpected or even conservative. Take a look at what’s out there and try to find a unique selling position for the content you have and play it up to everyone who will listen. Eventually people will start talking and in the online space, more importantly, linking.

In fact, here are a few tools to encourage users to actively link to your site:

• AddThis
• ShareThis
• SocialMarker
• SocialMarking

Just remember, there has to be some value or benefit to the user in order to get them to share your content. They are not simply going to start hawking your wares for no reason.

Anything obvious I left out or you recommend avoiding as well? Let me know in the comments.

Image courtesy of dreamsjung.

Microsoft and Yahoo have both been doing their darnedest lately to try and take back some of the market share that Google has earned for itself these days. Although marketers are not always the ultimate decision makers when it comes to which platform to advertise against, it all goes into a decision funnel that influences clients and eventually search engine users. Let me expound.

So I have a client who is looking to start a search campaign. They are looking for a recommendation on which engine(s) to use, but don’t really have a preference. Being media agnostic, I’ll recommend the best engines for their campaign objectives. However, I won’t necessarily like it if the mix contains Yahoo or Microsoft (Bing). To me, those are added overhead, added frustration, and added management time I don’t need. If the client gives me a window of opportunity, I’m going to take the path of least resistance and here’s where Yahoo and Bing are missing out on a lot of ad dollars. In a nutshell, here are 5 reasons why marketers avoid Yahoo and Bing and flock to Google when they have the opportunity.

Adwords Editor
First and foremost is the management of the campaign. Here is where Google excels. They provide an easy-to-use and robust desktop management application that makes updating campaigns a snap whether it’s across ad groups, keywords, or campaigns. Yahoo and Bing are both missing these features and have for some time. They’ve added some functionality as a conceit to the fact that many search marketers use the Adwords Editor and have an import feature to duplicate search campaigns across engines. There’s even a company that is based off of this single issue called Acquisio. Here is an easy way for Yahoo and Bing to make the management issue less of a headache. And it’s not just me, I’ve heard many small marketers who complain about the same thing, and as a result only use Google.

New Features
I’m sure the customer service personnel at Yahoo and Bing are sick of hearing “Well, Adwords has it”. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said that to my customer rep. But it’s true, most new features originate in Adwords and permeate through the other engines based on what marketers want or don’t want. Although they don’t all stick around, at least they are showing me, as a marketer, that at least part of my money is being fed back to me to try to make my job easier and more efficient. I’m not getting that feeling from the other guys.

Customer Support
Whereas I almost have what amounts to concierge service at Google, it seems like Yahoo and Bing have the keystone kops running their customer support departments. I assume it’s a result of hiring fresh college grads who are inexpensive and easy to replace, but it all goes into the user experience and influences decisions I make down the line.  Here’s how a few choice conversation’s have gone:

[in reference to a mobile marketing feature Adwords has]
Rep: “Yes, we have that feature.”
Me: “Great, how do I access it?”
Rep: “Well, you have to login to another account. I’ll have to check on how to get that setup.”
(And then I never hear from that rep again – this has happened with both Yahoo and Bing recently)

Or better yet – when I try and setup an international campaign:
Me: “I’d like to setup a paid search campaign in Japan.”
Rep: “Well, we don’t talk with Japan. You’ll have to call them and setup the account through them.”
(So I call Japan at 7 pm at night or 5 am in the morning to get my account setup. And none of the reps I talk with speak English very well.)

So needless to say, I call each department less and less and chip away budget from each over time.

Mobile Marketing
This is the newest development in the paid search tactic bucket. I’ve been trying to setup mobile marketing accounts for a few of our clients and Google makes it a piece of cake and bundles it all into one interface. And as you can see from the conversation above, I still haven’t heard anything from Yahoo or Bing as to how to setup those features. I had to follow up several times to finally get an answer.

You’re not helping my clients
And here’s the ultimate rub for Yahoo and Microsoft – granted, you can make my life frustrating and, as part of serving my clients, I have to accept it, but if you stop producing measurable results or I can see a better way to optimize my client accounts, I’m going to move on that so fast, it will make your head spin. The definition of efficiency is moving from point A to point B with as little resistance as possible, and the more roadblocks you put up, the less likely I am to use you in the future.

So please Yahoo and Bing – listen up. I’m trying to give constructive criticism and ultimately make both our lives easier.

Am I oversimplifying this or do you share the same frustrations I do? Let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: Please see Microsoft’s Advertising Community Blogger’s response below. Thanks Mel!

[Note: You'll get a lot more out of this article if you already have experience with Radian6. If not, you'll still probably get some insights.]

If you’re a search marketer, you might be getting bored these days. It seems like it’s all social media this and Twitter that. What happened to search marketing? When did we get all dusty? We’re like the old popular kid, when a new popular kid comes to town. Well fear no more, now you too can jump into the social media maelstrom. Have you thought about using social media to do your keyword research? Here me out for a second.

In the past, many search marketers have relied on Google’s Keyword suggestion tool, Keyword Discovery, Keyword Spy, Google Trends and Suggest, Omniture, and other keyword suggestion tools to come up with their search term lists. So those tools are pretty well tested and I have a feeling that many search agencies are starting to get a little bored. Well, what if we took the power of social media and constantly updating conversations and applied that to our search keywords. Here are some ideas:

Media Placement Keyword Terms
So for instance, you use a tool such as Google Blog Search, BlogCatalog, or Radian6 to monitor keywords such as “ice cream parlor” or “strawberry ice cream” and you find out that many of the conversations happening online are at sites like “Joe’s Ice Cream Blog”. Well, you can figure out how people are reaching that site using Compete.com data or just guessing (”joe’s ice cream blog”, “joe’s ice cream”,  “joe’s blog about ice cream”, etc.) and target keywords related to that, essentially snatching up users before they even reach Joe’s Ice Cream Blog.

Conversation Clouds and Related Terms
One of the cool features of Radian6 is that they provide a conversation or tag cloud associated with the keyword terms you are researching.Try putting in non-branded keywords and see how people are talking about those topics online. For example, we’ll use “strawberry ice cream” again. If people are talking about chocolate ice cream or Edy’s everytime “strawberry ice cream” is mentioned, maybe you should consider going after those terms as well. The conversation cloud will also clue you into frequency of those terms as well based on the size and color.

Influencer Link Building
Any good search program has some sort of link optimization or link building component to it and unless you have proprietary tools in house, identifying the right places to obtain links from can be difficult. Why not use Radian6’s influencer widget to determine who is the most influential in these spaces? By using traffic levels and “on topic posts” you can determine how relevant their site and content is, at least for the last 30 days. And as we’ve seen, Google loves blogs these days.

So do you use Radian6 at your agency currently? Do you also have a search marketing department? Maybe you should have a little pow wow and see if you can use social media as part of your search marketing mix.