After we’ve explained the reasons for using blog technlogy, far too numerous to mention again here, customers tend to call us with a blank sheet of paper after the first few coffees are long gone.

The best advice we can give is to go read something. Preferably something related to what you do of course, but for ideas there is nothing like ‘news’ to set people’s opinions going.

For the technical, they would use ‘Google Reader’ which is a fantastic tool for subscribing to relevant news from a google newsfeed.

You see, to generate your own personal news stream, head over to google news, search for something fundamental to your business, hunt for the RSS button and click. You’re done. Read once a week for instant idea juice.

So, why is this a good idea?

Blogs are publishing platforms of course, and one of the main reasons to publish is that you have some news. News is fresh, and Search Engines give this some credence by seemingly placing ‘news’ articles almost instantly into their index. Some higher than others of course.

To give a great example, one of the best case studies I’ve ever seen for Search Engine Optimisation has to be the Brent Payne interview recently over at the Wordtracker website. Kudos and links go to them, congratulations.

You couldn’t get a better example of how keywords and news mix to give exposure to those who work them hard. It sets an example to us all, you included!

Another example: when Google chose a new ‘doodle’ today to honour the invention of the barcode, I ’searched’ for bar code, and between the first time I looked and 20 minutes later, the Daily Telegraph leapt to the top of the rankings for a new article on bar code….above Wikipedia.

The reason Google did that, it’s ‘news’. See the google news feed…. and look for the orange button at the bottom.

The reason the Telegraph did that – it knows what people are looking for (from Stats or a keyword tool), and then writes about it. Just as the case study of the Tribune above, writing about things that ‘we know people are interested in’ is easier than trying to make it on your own.

Just I write this, I’m absolutely gratified to see one of my clients, who know a think about data capture and barcodes, have written an article on this very subject…spotting opportunities is a ‘key’ phrase for today.

My work there is done , oh wait, I don’t mean that.

“Right, we’ve finished our web re-design, now we need one of those search engine people”

Cue disappointed look from ’search engine types’.

Getting Search Engine attention is at least as much about what is done on the website as it is about external factors. These are far better thought about during the re-building of a website rather than afterwards. Not only that, it’s always difficult to propose changes to people who have waited a long time for their new site, hence the downcast feeling.

What to think about when re-designing a website

First things first: get some analytic software running on the site, so that you know which pages are getting traffic. This will help planning.

Do think about the existing ‘URL’s – the page addresses.

These are often changed, without a thought, to match the new schema. Of course, by ‘changed’ what we really mean is deleted and completely new pages put in their stead. They didn’t move them, they knocked the house down and built it elsewhere.

Redirects are important. Whenever you change an address, tell the people who send you things because if not, it will be ‘return to sender’.

How much that matters – probably depends on the page, but if visitors matter, then lets send them to a page that looks like something they were expecting, instead of a home page, or black holes.

The next thing is to check for Page Titles and Descriptions. Relevance is important, and if you were receiving visitors it was because Search Engines thought your page was relevant for ’something in particular’.  The ‘in particular’ is usually from the page title, content, and incoming links, but descriptions can help improve the number of visitors.

For the avoidance of doubt, here’s how Google uses page Titles, Descriptions and URL’s

All these things are inserted during the page construction, during the (re) building phase.

Yes, the external factors are important for SEO, but if the website isn’t properly organised, then it will never work as well as it could.

Lead generation on the web is as much about the visitor as the website.

If you had a sales meeting, and your prospect walked out half way through the conversation then you’d be doing some pretty deep soul searching.

Pitching the right thing to the right person is obvious isn’t it, when you think about it.

Yet, on your website, we come and go without offending anyone. In fact, most of us leave your website without doing anything. Are you thinking hard about that?

How can I help you?

For most companies, the website is a sales tool. And the place to start with any sales process is to ask “What are you looking for”?

And you can’t sell me anything unless you know what I’m interested in.

Business served up on a plate

What if Google told you what people are looking for….and offered to send them over? Would you then go ahead and build a page specifically addressing those needs?

That would be better wouldn’t it? That way, you’re only selling to people who are already interested, and you don’t need worry about covering a range of subjects, not yet.

Most people just guess when building a website. But you can find out what people are searching for with a very impressive service from Google – cunningly disguised as the Adwords keyword tool.

Before you put words on a website, use the tool to see what words people are using.

We’re always surprised at how many words people use to search for the same thing, and even more surprised at the variations within phrases.

Be Careful out there

The hidden catch, the one nearly everyone misses, is that the terms you look up on the tool, well, they’re like inside out russian dolls. The most important paragraph was that last one above – the one about variations of phrases.

One short phrase includes thousands of others. Intuitively, this is the wrong way round and we would expect that a long phrase includes plenty of short ones, but no, that’s not correct.

Upside Down Marketing

The term “shoes” gets 100 million searches. Only, it doesn’t, because although those searches include the word shoes, there are millions of variations – many of which will have absolutely no chance of converting into relevant business.

Why try and sell to them all?

This is upside down marketing. Get specific first and go for the low numbers.

As an aside, the numbers of people searching for ‘terms’ is amazingly consistent, and without being completely sure why, we think it’s something to do with the law of large numbers. Ironically.

So, although you’ll be pitching to low numbers of people this week. It does mean you’ll be doing that next week, and the week after that.

If you’re worried about the low numbers thing. We would recommend you sell to large quantities of small numbers.

At last, a proper website plan

Knowing that people are looking before you build your page, does motivate and give you great confidence that the effort you put in will be worthwhile. You’d be amazed how much difference this approach makes to everything you do on a website.

With search engines delivering over 90% of traffic to a website, it pays to know how to use them properly.

Blog technology has huge business benefits, but the best in business say it’s about more than that.

In the last few days, several people, in quite different industries told me they felt integrity was crucial to their business. Pointedly, they also said they were competing with people without.

Underneath I’m not sure they really believe that’s true, but what if all the good people wrote blog articles regularly? I like to think it would help us all rise above the blaggers – and in a very literal way, with Google in mind, it probably will do.

When you write stuff down, good things tend to happen.

A friend sent this to me, I’m guessing it’s because I’ve been too busy to write lately. Perhaps if they would be so kind as to send this over about once a week or so?

A collection of inspirational web content is building on a hidden page in the Conversationware Web Vaults.

This time, a strange source. Not some wacky software entrepreneur, or some compelling life lessons for us this week -

Oh no….. it’s a presentation from Netflix, a monolith that is a publicly quoted company – they just shared a slide deck (meant to be read online) about HR.

Click image to Inspiration Page

Ok, so that shouldn’t be inspirational. But it sets out how it sees the development and most importantly the retention of talent within the company, and how to escape from HR as a business process…. their words, not mine!

It’s extremely interesting for those with 10 minutes to spare.

Internet marketing, or more specifically, search engine marketing, when done brilliantly, is the gift that keeps on giving.

It is most rewarding on a number of levels, and not least because enquiries are generally from new prospects.

But someone reminded me that levels of business generated over the last 12 months is important, but can be dwarfed when considering repeat business. Add to that any residual income such as support and training, those golden ongoing references and referrals, it is staggering how much more a happy customer can generate over and above the original order.

In search terms (sic), given that search engines give you plus marks for longetivity and credibility, your pages and content can improve their performance over time, and generate on an ongoing basis. Compare that to the cost of transient advertisements, as I heard someone do today, and the value becomes clearer.

I’m grateful to be reminded that I do important work, even if I was the only one who heard it that way.

Thanks to all at BNI Milton Keynes this morning, I enjoyed it immensely. See you next week.

I have set you a challenge. Why would I take this picture of my office for you?

From Conversationware

You would need to see it in more detail, but feel free to submit your entries in the comments, the winner might even get a prize.

There is no such thing as a sales funnel with Google Adwords PPC marketing.

With traditional marketing, it is tempting always to contact a lot of people, and  by process of elimination the leads will eventually fall out the bottom of the funnell.

Yes – the sales funnell is deliberately upside down, and you don’t need to read it. Starting with awareness and ending up with a deal is the old way.

Starting with your best prospects and working outwards is the new way, at least it is for us here in marketing newtown (milton keynes).

Search marketing visualisation

The reality of the search marketing world is that it’s flat. Time starts as soon as you press the ‘go’ button.

Advertising on the most specific of terms, those best describing the product or service you offer, the more likely you are to get contacts.

So, widening the search, so to speak, as per the diagram above, can result in potentially less hits for your money. The balance is to keep juggling factors to keep the return on investment.

In other words, the less you spend initially, the more likely you are to get good value. (why not start then?)

Broad search terms could still be desirable, because you may still influence people earlier in their buying cycle. But the key is to reduce the non-relevant clicks as much as is possible. Negative keywords, restricting location or keeping phrases and adverts very specific are good examples of digital marketing to the niches.

It is a state of mind.

How shall we improve it today?

You may know that physics has a rather interesting problem.

In layman’s terms (meaning I can get this ever so slightly wrong), there are;

a. well understood laws for large objects – bigger than an atom – called relativity, and
b. well understood (if not quite complete) laws for very small objects or particles in ‘quantum’ level physics.

And, these laws are mutually incompatible.

Up until 50 years ago, physicists were making brilliant progress, assuming that all was going swimmingly well, and but for a few pauses, discoveries of the 18th century were being developed and were informing the next logical theories right through to the point it all just….got really confusing, and nothing worked.

Even Einstein spent his last thirty years looking for something that would bring it all together, but ultimately he came up blank.

Marketing has similar issues.

As our friend Seth Godin says, mass marketing has worked fine, making its inexorable progress through the TV industrial complex, right up to the point where things got very small. Channels, readership, circulation, user bases, blog posts (twitter) and attention spans (I must get to the point), well, they have all shrunk immeasurably.

Suddenly, the old rules don’t work any more – in fact they’re more confusing than anything we could have possibly imagined. Just like our physics.

We’re dealing in fragments.

Fragmented tasks, fragmented communications, markets, job descriptions, jobs, economic realities, projects, product life cycles and fleeting fads, microscopic opportunities. Higgs Boson PR anyone?

Are we truly going to end up marketing on a one to one basis? Hasn’t anyone got a chaos theory we can use to put this together? Well, there have been a few viewpoints around one aspect – SEO vs PR. All from one conversation on a social network. Now there’s a promising start.

Jamie Burke and the evolution of Online PR

Jed Hallam, SEO and Public Relations

Stuart Bruce, Public relations is about reputation

Stephen Waddington, good summary from a technical PR perspective

Wom on Socnets from Rob Brown

Julia Shuvalova, you need every digital marketing skill in a perfect world (including the higgs boson perhaps)

My two penneth, at this stage, is that this seems like a classic big bang confluence of ideas, skillsets and job descriptions. A Large Hadron Collider…especially when you include communications technology, which is driving all this together (in circles perhaps). Convergence.

Industry vs techniques, pah, so much fluff to me. Where do we all come from, and what is the meaning of life? Is there a dog after all? Which particle of the marketing atom are you?

Forget whatever industry you think you’re in, it is about sales, marketing and relationships. But not necessarily in that order.

As an aside to my PR friends, isn’t reputation management only necessary when you’re not able to control your product or your people….oh wait, what? we can’t do that?

I do have some string theory, I’ll have to post soon, but I’m getting the feeling the attention span is ‘gone’, and we’re all moving on to the next big passing phase. So I’ll stop for now.

Any more views you can point out, the more the merrier.

A timely page from Google for people thinking of reviewing their Adwords tactics.

I did chuckle at one stat they used to support the Adwords business case.

Marketing is more important than ever. Ninety-four percent of CMOs believe that “a tough economic period is precisely the time when marketing plays a key role.”

Source: Epsilon, “Epsilon CMO Survey,” September, 2008.

What I want to know is, which 6 percent of CMO’s don’t think marketing will play a key role.