Happy New Year everyone! It’s been a  while since I last posted, but I wanted to post some housekeeping and housecleaning ideas for 2011 to get those SEO juices flowing.

Take another look at Webmaster tools
This is probably something many of you do on a regular basis. I think most of us take a look at the keyword report, the crawling stats and inbound links, but there’s many other reports in there that don’t always get our full attention. Have you setup your domain to display as “www” vs “non-www”? Should your domain target users in a specific country? Do you know if you have malware on your site?

I recently had an issue with our site CMS where it was throwing a “soft 404″ error instead of a legitimate “404 error”. Don’t know what a soft 404 error is? Well, it’s when a page isn’t found and the user is directed to what looks like an error page but the server doesn’t throw a 404 error code.  Here’s some more info on “soft 404” errors. This doesn’t necessarily effect our SEO rankings to a large extent, however, in terms of serving up the freshest content to our site users, as well as search engines, it can be an issue. So even if you review these numbers on a regular basis, take a look at some of those other facts and figures you may not always analyze.

Domain Aggregation and Consolidation
If you’re a company that has numerous URL’s floating around on the web as a result of past marketing efforts, PR landing pages, microsites, affiliates, or whatever the case may be, now may be the time to get those domains in order. Maybe you registered www.company2008.com, www.company2009.com, and www.company2010.com. Should you have them all point to www.company2011.com? Or to your home corporate site? It’s better to 301 redirect them to your most current site or just to a root domain site for the time being than to just leave them floating out in the ether until a user or search engine stumbles across them. And the same could be said for root folder redirects (www.domain.com/2010contest) or subdomain redirects (2008pr.domain.com). I know that it’s easy to set and forget with some domains, but now is a good time to revisit these old domains and dust off the IT cobwebs.

What are your competitors doing?
Now you may have been savvy to what your competitors were doing in 2010, but 2011 is a new year and that means new marketing budgets. It may be time to take a look at what they’re doing on their corporate site, on any other domains you’ve been able to identify as theirs, or what they are doing externally (i.e. with affiliates or through link building). Have you identified any risks in your strategy or theirs that either of you can capitalize on? How will you know if they figure out your weaknesses or how will you exploit theirs? It’s always good to have a plan B or some kind of alert ready in case you see some serious moves from them.

New Year, New Content
As it’s the new year, that means you should take a fresh look at the content on your site. Are there old sections you can remove or consolidate to improve the user experience? Before you remove anything though, check to see if it’s driving traffic to the site and how you can make the best use of it.

Or should you promote that old content again as it’s now timely? Your site metrics may be able to tell you based on seasonal trends.

Is there new content waiting to be posted? When was the last time you spoke with your content experts? Is there anything they can share that you can use to drive additional traffic to the site? Why not shoot them an email today and find out.

The bottom line is that Google loves all content, as long as it’s unique to your site, accurate to the best of your abilities, and timely to your market segment.

Vendor Communication
And lastly, let’s talk about vendor communication. I mentioned earlier that my CMS was throwing “soft 404″ errors. Well my vendor has recently made an upgrade to the platform to eliminate those, but it was at my request. They’ve also made some other enhancements for added functionality and reporting. It was only because we speak on a regular basis and I keep an eye on our metrics to tie to the two together. As part of the new year, give your vendors a call to see what enhancements they can make to your applications or new products and services they can offer you. You’ll be glad you did. (That is assuming you’ve paid all outstanding invoices, in which case, maybe hold off on that)

Have any other SEO ideas for the New Year? Let me know if the comments.

Image courtesy of sporkist

1. For many SEO marketers, the focus previously has been on ranking reports and page rank increases. What do you see as “the new metric” that many marketers are now focusing on?
We have definitively seen SEO marketers start measuring the effectiveness of their SEO campaigns with business metrics such as revenue, sign-ups, time on site, etc. We saw this trend in our enterprise customers start about one year ago, driven by the fact that SEO is becoming a top-tier online channel with C-level executive visibility. Recently, we release BrightEdge Connect which brings SEO into the CMO’s dashboard and have seen incredible adoption in the marketplace.

2. How does that metric vary by industry? Or does it?
The metric indeed vary by industry. E-commerce sites will be focused on purchases, finance and insurance on sign ups, internet and media on page views and time on site. There is usually one main key performance indicator that drives the entire business and that is the one to focus on for SEO.

3. Should B2B marketers evaluate SEO differently than B2C? Are the tactics any different?
We have found that the biggest differences are not B2B vs B2C but come from the current status of your SEO and what you have to achieve to become competitive. For example, here are different tactics for two companies both in B2C: you might be a financial services company going after a small set of head terms or you might be an e-commerce site with a large product catalog targeting the long tail. In all cases, the tactics are similar: start with a visibility baseline, develop a roadmap that moves the needle quickly using existing assets as well new ones, and then start growing your SEO footprint. The details vary company by company.

4. As an SEO marketer myself, I find one of the hardest things to predict or forecast is traffic modeling & forecasting, especially within an existing campaign. Do you have any recommendations for how folks can evaluate opportunity cost within SEO (i.e. if I move from position 12 to position 10, how much traffic can I expect?)
We work with our customers to build this capability over time. We found that forecasting improvements and click-throughs is highly dependent on the specific situation. It depends on the industry, the type of keyword – purchase vs research, competitive landscape, and even the number of paid ads. Our recommendation is to get a baseline, understand why and how fast your metrics change when you optimize for organic search, and then apply to a forecasting model.

5. Do you have any platforms you can recommend to folks that provide a holistic approach to SEO, incorporating ranking reports, traffic analytics, sales/leads/revenue all into one package or does one exist?
This is exactly what we offer at BrightEdge! We have developed the first SEO platform that combines all these metrics but also provide the dashboards, keyword research, recommendations, and workflow all in one place to execute on SEO. In a nutshell, we were the first to make SEO as easy to manage as PPC.

6. How do you think Google Instant will effect SEO or what do you think the future of SEO looks like?
There has been a lot of speculation on the effects of Google Instant on SEO. We expect changes in keyword volumes with some searches for longer multi-token keywords moving to the shorter keywords suggested by Google Instant. With only two weeks of data and the fact that many searches are not impacted by Google Instant, the effects have been marginal. We are monitoring the situation with our enterprise customers but right now the news is that there are no news.

At BrightEdge, we believe the future of SEO is brighter than ever. We are seeing an acceleration in demand for our SEO platform from companies across the board. You might have seen our recent announcements with MySpace, Symantec, VMware to name a few. Using SEO for driving relevance and authority is not going away any time soon, regardless of the changes at the point of search.

Many thanks for Jim Yu and Albert Gouyet for contributing to this article.

Disclosure: I’ve been given a press pass to attend and cover SES Chicago.

A few days ago saw the big launch of Google Instant, and if you haven’t tried it yet, it’s a totally different search experience compared to the Google of old. Initial reaction was mixed from SEO is dead to SEO lives on to my initial reaction that in fact, it’s just plain annoying. Now that all the initial reactions are out of the way, let’s take a step back and analyze how this really effects paid and organic search from a user experience standpoint, as well as a marketer’s standpoint.

Paid Search (User)
From a user standpoint, the sponsored listing haven’t changed. The only difference now is that users may see many more variations of them as they type their query. Now, these will probably pass them by without them noticing much, but they still rapidly change. I’m sure Google did extensive user testing on this, but we’ll see how this plays out over time. I think you’ll hear from some that they don’t like the new interface or that it’s too distracting, but it’s still new, so we’ll see over time.

Paid Search (Marketer)
From a marketing perspective, what the heck do you do now? Stay the course? Change your whole strategy? Well, my early thought is that head terms will start to play a much bigger influence on user behavior. As you type, Google “guesses” what your going to type next. So if I type “auto” it guesses that I mean “autozone”, “auto trader”, “auto parts” and a few others. It’s these guesses, much as a I said about Google Suggest, will start to sculpt user awareness around what Google recommends. As a result, my early impression is that long tail is going to take a bit of a hit. Users are inherently lazy and with Google’s redesigned interface, it’s as if they are funneling people towards top brands or sites and it’s because of that, I think some users are going to bail out earlier than they might have without the suggestions and predictions. There have been some analysts that have said Google Instant may be a play to game the volume based measurement system and make Google appear larger than it is already. I don’t think that’s it entirely. I think this play is about increasing profits faster than they would have otherwise. Here’s my theory – cost per click bids have only been increasing as more competition goes into the marketplace. This is good for Google and bad for marketers, however, as head terms become more and more expensive, good marketers have been focusing more on the tail where more qualified customers often lie. This is bad for Google, but good for marketers. With this platform change, Google has said “Ok marketers, we’re going to push your customers back up the keyword funnel to shorter head terms and if you want to follow, you have to pay the price.” Am I wrong? Possibly, but tell me it doesn’t make sense on some level.

Organic Search (User)
Same interface as before for the user, only now the results flash by rapidly as the user types. The other difference I noticed is that when a user moves from page to page, it looks like the entire page fades out and fades in with new results, as opposed to a complete page refresh. I assume this is related to some AJAX magic Google is using to serve up these results in the first place on the fly.

Organic Search (Marketer)
From a marketing perspective, I think the suggestions are also going to effect the head terms more positively than tail terms. For authoritative, high ranking sites who rank well for head terms, I don’t think you need to worry about much. Continue to do what you’ve been doing, however, if you are a long tail site that subsists primarily on long tail terms, I’d be wary of these changes. Based on my experience, I’m going to assume that some users who are unfocused are going to start typing their query, up comes some results which are close to what they were looking for, and they click away never fully realizing the long tail search they may have entered if the suggestions and predictions not appeared. Again, this is early and we’ll have to see what the industry nets out, but that’s my initial reaction.

And if you’re looking for additional opinions and resources, check out this complete breakdown of industry analysts and form your own opinion or look at Google’s take on it on the AdWords Blog or the AdWords FAQ. Have you seen any changes initially to your campaign results? What do you think is the future of this “feature”?

Image courtesy of svenstorm

I can’t believe it’s almost been seven months since I became a “client”. Maybe it flew by so fast, because I was occupied with some other things. In any case, while I’ve been at JC Whitney, I’ve learned a few things about how a search agency should and should not work with their clients and I wanted to relay a few of those things to those interested. And one point before I begin, at JC Whitney I manage numerous SEO specific vendor relationships on a regular basis, so I have exposure to several types of agencies and their deliverables. So here are five tips for SEO agencies out there wondering, “I wonder what I can do to be a better agency partner”:

Provide value
Man, going right for the jugular, aren’t you Jeff? When I say, provide value, I mean, just because we signed a contract and we’re all set to go with the first project, don’t think you’ve “won” the business and it’s time to slack off. You need to prove it day in and day out. We have a few agencies who we can consistently rely on to get an email when Google makes any algorithm changes or if they see something weird going on in our analytics. There are other agencies who we say “We need this type of report” and that’s exactly what they deliver. No more, no less. And in the case they deliver less, we continuously ask for less and less from them, eventually terminating the relationship. If you provide more than the client expects, you can get away with the occasional faux pas or miscalculation.

Provide insights
Anybody can look at a ranking report and say “Yup, your rankings increased”. What I need you to do is to conjecture, hypothesize, and theorize why our rankings/traffic/etc increased or decreased. The reason I hired you is because you are the “expert”. If you live and breathe this everyday, you should know more than I do. As a client, SEO is the bulk of my responsibilities, but I also have other projects that I need to be responsible for and can’t read every blog post out there and I certainly don’t have access to numerous other clients experience to draw from. I need you to provide me those insights.

Ask questions and tout your services
Who is your primary demographic? What search engine converts the best? Do you have a Bing / Yahoo strategy? How do paid and organic play off each other? I could go on and on. The reason I bring this one up is because I was new to many of the relationships we have with our vendors, as they were negotiated before I arrived. In any case, many of our vendors just accepted their role in our strategy and haven’t pushed beyond that or taken the time to fully explain all the services they offer. With a new client contact, you need to reemphasize the services you offer and how you can help your client. By asking questions, you can constantly be pushing and selling new services and offerings, which benefit both your client as well as your bottom line.

Be vigilant
The reason I bring this one up is that we have relationships with at least 3 or 4 agencies who are actively monitoring our site and our content. Out of those, if something goes wrong on our site, I might hear from 1 or 2 of them, maybe. Why don’t I hear from all of them you ask? Not sure, but it definitely figures into what projects I give them in the future. Especially in the case of search, there are so many tools out there, both free and paid to monitor traffic and rankings, I should hear from all of them every time something “major” happens, but instead, I’m only hearing from a few.

Be creative
And last, but not least, be creative. I understand search, especially organic search, isn’t always the most glamorous thing. There’s lots of data crunching, IT work, programming, database optimization, etc. etc. but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk branding, engagement, site design, usability, new site functionality, conversion optimization, A/B testing or a myriad of other marketing tactics out there. At the end of the day, SEO is one part rankings and traffic, but also one part site experience. The more users enjoy your site, the more they will link to it, the more they will tell their friends, and so on and so forth. So stop just thinking page titles and URL’s and start thinking about the entire site experience holistically.

So what do you think? Am I setting the bar too high for search agencies? I know when I was in the agency world, I was doing all of these things on a regular basis, so I know it’s not impossible. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Photo courtesy of chriscoyier

If you’ve followed my blog for some time, you’ll know that I’m a big proponent of local, sustainable, and environmentally conscious. Whenever possible, I try and incorporate those things into my life. I’ve been lauding the auto industry’s move from entirely petroleum based to hybrid to electric only. And as part of my move to JC Whitney, this has only spurred on this passion.

I was recently over on Chicago’s West side and happened to see a new member to the Chicago automotive scene. It was a Tesla dealership, right in downtown Chicago. I was able to get in contact with Tesla to find out what’s going on with them and what they see happening with electric vehicles in the next few years. The following is an exchange I had with Jeremy Siwek, a product specialist with Palo Alto based Tesla Motors.

Can you give us a quick background for anyone not already familiar with Tesla?
Tesla Motors is an American car company based in Palo Alto, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. The auto manufacturer was created with the intention of furthering electric vehicle technology to make electric vehicles available and affordable for the mass-market. The company was founded in 2003 and began delivering cars in 2008. Tesla has delivered approximately 1,000 Roadsters in 44 States and 23 countries. They are available in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, with availability in Japan and Australia coming extremely soon.

I’ve heard a lot about the Tesla Roadster and Model S, but can you give us a run down of the specs for each and how they are different.
The Tesla Roadster is a real supercar. It accelerates from 0-60 in 3.7 seconds, with amazing handling, braking, and response. The range on a single charge is 236 miles based on EPA standards and testing. It takes only about 3.5 hours to charge the battery from empty to full. The car in can be charged in any conventional outlet, in your own garage, at a cost of about $5.

With a base price of $109,000 (exclusive of various Federal and state tax credits), the Roadster represents a huge value when compared to other cars in its performance category. Savings on maintenance and fuel expenses can easily surpass $25,000+ over a 7-8 year period (see total cost of ownership study). It is really the only supercar that can be, and should be, driven every day. The Roadster is also beautifully simple, intuitive, and fun to drive.

Model S is a gorgeous, full-size luxury sedan due to hit the market at the very end of 2011. Pricing starts at $57,400 ($49,900 w/ the Federal tax credit taken into account) and it will be offered with 160, 230, and 300 mile range options. 0-60 time should be around 5.6 seconds. Tesla is currently taking reservations on the Model S for 2012 delivery. A great resource for more information on the car is the 3-part video series found here.

If I’m not mistaken, both the Roadster and Model S have lithium ion battery technology. Is there a next generation battery on the horizon or do you think lithium ion is here to stay for a while?
6,831 lithium-ion cells are in the battery pack of the Tesla Roadster. We will also use lithium-ion technology in the Model S. Our engineers are always testing the best lithium-ion chemistries and technologies for batteries used in electric vehicles and are committed to always using the best solutions. Right now lithium-ion proves to be the best possible option that meets the requirements of reliability, energy density, steady supply availability, and cost effectiveness.

Tesla has played a huge role in the increase in interest and demand for lighter, more powerful batteries that charge quicker and last longer in both the consumer electronics market and the electric vehicle market. In fact Panasonic recently announced that it is working with Tesla to develop batteries for electric vehicles.

One very nice aspect of purchasing a Roadster or a Model S is that, when a new battery technology is released, your Tesla can take advantage of that by swapping old for new. Unlike a gas-powered car, a Tesla can actually improve with age. A battery pack that weighs half as much and puts out more energy will come, and swapping that into your ’08 Roadster five, eight, or ten years from now might result in a 2.8 second 0-60 and 350 miles of range.

One major issue I’ve heard associated with electric vehicles is the cost of battery production. Is that fact or fiction and how is Tesla addressing it?
Current battery technology is somewhat expensive, but it is not cost-prohibitive. Keep in mind that, yes, while an electric vehicle battery pack might cost a fair amount (a Roadster owner can lock in a replacement battery pack for $12,000), an EV does not require a costly gas engine, transmission, exhaust system, gas tank and fuel lines, pumps, emissions equipment, and everything else necessary to support a combustion engine. As battery technology advances and as it becomes more prevalent, the cost goes down.

In terms of electric vehicle infrastructure (EVI) and smart grids, can people actually make money by using their car as mobile electrical storage? Is that a reality today or how far off is it really?
Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, the smart grid, and V2G (Vehicle to Grid) are all part of an ongoing discussion to optimize energy efficiency. Where EVs are the future, EVI is by some thought to be the salvation of the automotive industry. We are, however, a far way off from a large scale system where electric cars can both pull from and give back to the electric grid.

What we do already see with our customers is some who use solar arrays or wind power to sell electricity back to the utility company during the day, when peak hour rates are high, only to use electricity from the grid at night while the off-peak rates are extremely low and when they are home from work (and charging their car). It is not too difficult to come out ahead on your bill in this manner. What we have seen, from hundreds of thousands of miles of Roadster charging, is that our owners charge their vehicles almost exclusively at off-peak hours. Essentially, with no changes to the grid whatsoever, even an extremely large number of electric car owners can be easily supported by our existing infrastructure and our existing electrical supply capability.

Do you find that “traditional” automotive customers are accepting of totally electric vehicles? What’s the one thing people miss the most when driving electric?
Yes. The drive experience is absolutely amazing. The convenience of ‘filling up’ at home and never going to a gas station again is huge. The convenience of no regular maintenance such as oil changes, belts, spark plugs, filters, etc., is one of the reasons people love living with an electric vehicle. Tesla cars require only a once-a-year checkup. A $50,000 Tesla is the equivalent of a $35,000 gas vehicle if you take into account maintenance and fuel savings over a 7-8 year period. Add into that the amount of time you save by never going to a gas station again or taking the time to have your oil changed, and it’s amazing the push for EV’s isn’t even bigger.

We find that people love the power, response, and extremely connected drive experience that you get with an electric vehicle, and because Tesla took an uncompromised approach to design and performance when building our electric car, drivers have no reason to feel like they are missing out on anything.

What do you see as the biggest impediment to major adoption of electric vehicles in the US?
Our biggest hurdle is the misperception of range, or what we call range anxiety. Even though, realistically, most people almost never drive more than 236 miles in a single day (especially in a Roadster-style sports car), as soon as the thought of a potential limitation hits, it becomes a barrier. The fact is that the cars can and do road trip, and it will continue to become easier and easier as charge times come down and charging infrastructure across the country, and world, grows.

We have had many Roadster owners drive across the country, and Tesla recently completed a road trip from LA to Detroit for the Detroit Auto Show. There are far more outlets than gas stations, and filling up is as easy as plugging in. With an empty-to-full charge running from $3.50 to ~$6.00 depending on where you are in the country, hotels, restaurants, malls, etc., are more than happy to let you charge for free if it means you’re going to be staying there for a few hours. Model S will have a quick charge capability, giving it about 85% of its 300 mile range in around 45 minutes. If you absolutely must make the trip as quickly as possible, but are not flying, the savings on fuel and maintenance more than cover the cost of a rental car even a few times a year, assuming the EV is your only vehicle.

With many more plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) and electric vehicles (EV) coming to market (Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius, etc.), how do you see Tesla competing in a increasingly competitive market segment?
You really can’t compare the Tesla Roadster, or even the Model S, to most of these other vehicles. Although they share the category of EV (and PHEV, if that can be seen as a substitute), the battery range and speed is not comparable. When you look at design, performance, and price point, the Roadster’s competition is a Porsche, Maserati, Ferrari, or other high performance car. With that, Tesla will always differentiate itself through its technology, quality, and performance. The range-per-charge, battery maintenance systems, and drive experience will continue to be vastly different from that of the competition.

If people are interested in learning more about Tesla, what’s the best avenue for them to connect with Tesla?
www.TeslaMotors.com

Is there anything under wraps over at Tesla that you can share or give us a preview of?
Sorry… [editor's note: Aw shucks!]

I’d like to thank Jeremy and Tesla for taking the time to answer these questions. A note to readers, I’m in the process of securing a test drive and I’ll report back on how that goes shortly.

And lastly, you may have noticed the title of this post is “electric vehicles” in Chicago and not “electic cars” in Chicago. Stay tuned. I have a bunch of electric related test drives and demos in the works, so stay tuned.

So it’s been a month since I’ve moved over to the client side. To be honest, this first month has flown by. Learning about new brands, new internal processes, new technical architecture, new product taxonomy, and new office and vendor relationships can do that. In any case, over the next few months, I’m going to reflect on what it’s like to work on the client side and some of the changes I’ve seen since moving from one side to the other. The focus of this post is the final deliverable. The final deliverable may, in actuality, not be the final deliverable, however, I’m referring instead to the end product of a specific project or series of projects. It’s the Word document, Powerpoint presentation, website, PDF, etc. an agency delivers to the client, the client reacts to, and the agency ultimately gets paid.

So what’s different about being on a the receiving end of these documents? A lot! Here are a few of the things I’ve noticed since being on the client side.

It’s all in the details
On the agency side here is what a typical project looks like:

SEO Guy: So I ran that analysis for the client. Looks like things are going pretty good, but there’s this one keyword that’s still not moving.
Client Manager: What can we do to get it moving?
SEO Guy: I have to run some more analysis, but I’m almost done with the report.
Client Manager: Well, you better hurry up. It’s due tomorrow.
SEO Guy: I’ll stay late to get it done. [12:15 am, delivers report]
Client Manager: Thanks for that report.
SEO Guy: That last chart took me 4 hours to pull together. I couldn’t get Excel to format it correctly.
Client Manager: No problem. Can you have the proofreader look it over?
Proofer: Looks good. I made a few changes.
SEO Guy: Changes look good.
Client Manager: Great. I’ll send it over this afternoon.

As the client, here is what I see:

Client Manager: Dear Jeff. Attached is the report you requested. We look forward to your questions.

See the difference? On the agency side, there are numerous people who are touching the report. Editing, re-editing, copying, updating, stressing, proofing, creating, modifying, and reviewing. On the client side, I don’t see all that. All I see if the end product and I have to make my own assumptions about where time was or was not spent. And just as it goes, even if you [the agency] spent 98% of your time on one chart or one set of data, if you forget to spell check the document before sending it over, the few typos in it may throw the entire document into question as to whether the data is valid or not.

Since I’m disconnected from the process and don’t see the late nights, weekend sessions, frantic internal calls, etc. I don’t know why the data didn’t sum correctly or that number seems off. All I can do is react to what I’m given and if all I’m shown is a poorly written document, confusing data sets, typo laden paragraphs, or unusable charts, what am I supposed to think?

So I’m not saying, if you’re on the agency side to double your proofing efforts or throw out your current process in favor of something completely Machiavellian. I’m just saying that the next time you get a question from the client or they point out something grammatically incorrect with your introduction paragraph, just know that it’s because they are seperated from the process and don’t see all the minutia that goes into the creation of the final deliverable. And yes, we do appreciate your work, even if you used “they’re” instead of “their” or “it’s” instead of “its”.

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.