They swore it had nothing to do with my age.

Also, I'm going to Nova Scotia for 10 days. For 5 of 'em I won't even have cell access. So no blog posts for a bit. I shall return, more sarcastic and bitter than ever.

Oh: All I want for my birthday, by the way, is more subscribers. Get on that will ya?

You're marooned on a desert island. Miraculously, you've got plenty of food and water, and a laptop that's mysteriously connected to the internet. But you are only able to browse 3 blogs.

What 3 would it be? And no cheating: You can't use Alltop, or Google Reader, or that kind of thing.

As for me, I'd want:

AgencyTart, assuming she doesn't abandon us all again.

Smashing Magazine, so I could remain jealous of their success and ability.

The Huffington Post, so I could keep up with the world and remember that being marooned isn't all that bad.

How about you?

Social media and SEO are now inextricably linked. You couldn't separate 'em if you tried.

I used to tell clients "Hey, we'll do SEO, and if you pay us extra we'll execute a nice social media marketing campaign, too".

Truth is, though, you can't do a good job in SEO any more without social media marketing. And you sure as heck won't succeed in social media marketing if you ignore SEO.

SEO Needs Social Media

Search engine optimization, at its core, is based on relevance and authority.

Relevance comes from content that has the right keywords and concepts. What's one of the best ways to add content to a site? A blog! Assuming, of course, you can keep the site owner from having apoplexy at the prospect of writing 200 words once a week.

What's another great way to add content to a site? Community! Comments, discussion forums and 'submit your story' type stuff drives growth.

And guess what? Blogs and community content are part of that mushy, IPO-driven concept called 'social media'.

Authority comes from links. I dare you to carry out a successful link campaign without bloggers and sites like Digg, Stumbleupon and all those other communities we spam on a weekly basis, begging folks for just one vote.

Yes, I'm oversimplifying. Lambast me in the comments if you must.

Social Media Needs SEO

You can no longer succeed in social media without a boost from the search engines, either (Unless you're famous, of course, in which case you don't really need social media at all).

You can try to launch a social media campaign purely through social news sites, bookmarking and outreach. But what're the odds you're going to hit the front page of Reddit or Digg? Pretty slim, since there are at least 999,999,999 other slavering marketers trying to do the same thing.

Your success in social media will eventually depend on search rankings in a blog search tool and the general search results. Maybe it'll be your bookmark page, maybe a Twitter post, or the page itself, but the search rankings will matter. Have a look at my rankings for 'Hassenplarfer':

That little experiment shows just how much rankings can drive traffic to social media. Had 'hassenplarfer' actually been a real word, this result would drive traffic to all of my social media placements. Take away search and most of those placements would gather dust.

And blogs, of course, can't survive without SEO. In spite of my wide-ranging stardom, readership of nearly 10 people and my 3 friends, Google still drives most of my site traffic:

Mated For Life

SEO and social media marketing are now inseparable. Next time you think about saving a few bucks by slashing one in favor of the other, keep that in mind...

I got up bright and early this morning to try and grab some good domains in the big .ME landrush.

I was pleasantly surprised when I landed about 2/3 of the domains I wanted. GoDaddy charged my PayPal account, sent me order confirmations and said "Hey! Good job!".

Then, a few hour laters, they started sending me these:

Evil? Probably not. Stupid? Definitely

I don't think GoDaddy would be stupid enough to bait-and-switch, grabbing domains folks try to buy and then selling them at a premium at auction. But I do think they were stupid enough to allow simultaneous domain registrations by multiple people.

They expressed surprise at the level of interest and said server load caused the problem. Are you kidding? You guys didn't expect a lot of people to try and reserve domains ending with 'me'?

In This Case, Stupid = Evil

Unfortunately, in this case, GoDaddy doesn't get a pass. Their incompetence, or lack of caring, or whatever, pushed a lot of business to the domain auctions.

And the whole thing stinks of a bait-and-switch.

Given the bad taste they left in everyone's mouth it probably won't be long before someone goes and hires a lawyer.

For now, all we can do is shake our heads.

Update

I went to auctions.domain.me and lo and behold, the domain I tried to get this morning, ani.me is now in the auction house! What a coincidence.

Clearly, the registrar grabbed the domain after I tried to buy it. Sort of like peeking over my shoulder during a test.

So, I contacted the .me folks to ask how I get a username and password so I participate. "You can't unless you have permission."

And you only get permission from registrars. So, I go back to GoDaddy to get that permission. Guess what? No way to get it.

If anyone ever straightens this total clusterf--k out, they're going to find out that Donald Rummesfeld took over the .ME auctions after he got booted out of Washington DC...

Update, 7/18

I contacted GoDaddy to get permission to participate in the .ME auctions, and got this message back:

So, let's see if I'm getting this right:

1. When I tried to buy a domain of less than 4 letters, you snagged it and put it in the auction house.
2. But I can't go into the auction house because I didn't pre-register the domain.
3. Which of course you didn't let me do anyway.

By the way, a WHOIS query on ani.me shows NOT FOUND. If someone bought it, why is it still not found?

So, here's my question/challenge for domain.me:

Ani.me is not on your list of premium or reserved names. It was not reserved before I tried to buy it from GoDaddy. It was suddenly reserved seconds after, and now it's in your closed auction house.

You state that you'll render null and void auctions where you suspect fraud. [ fraudulent activity ]

I dare you: Declare these auctions null and void. The registrars are clearly taking advantage of you. Start over and let all of us actually take an honest shot at reserving these domains.

Update 2, 7/18

GoDaddy just called and apologized for all the screw ups. They said it was because of unexpected demand.

I wish that either:

• Dumbass companies who use dumbass excuses like that got fired by all their clients. God knows no one cuts us poor consultants any slack. And I'd never have the nerve to say I didn't expect great demand on one of the biggest domain landrushes in years. OR
• The same tolerance for utter, unbelievable stupidity and duplicity extended to us poor consultants.

The more folks look at the data, the more suspicious this is, and apologies won't clear it up, GoDaddy. Someone grabbed the best domains and stashed them. "Sorry" doesn't cut it.

You want to lower your bounce rate. Here are a few tips for doing just that.

What's Bounce Rate, Anyway?

Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who visit a page on your site and then leave without looking at any other pages. It's a good way to tell if that page is keeping visitors' attention or not.

The bounce rate on your home page is particularly telling. Your home page should be pretty compelling for the folks who go there. Many of them just typed in your web address; others came from branded keyword searches; and still others may have found your address in an article or other literature. They're the most-interested or at least potentially most-interested visitors.

The bounce rate on Conversation Marketing home page is a fairly ghastly 64%:

Shudder.

Reducing Home Page Bounce Rate

But enough about me! Here are 7 tips I've found can reduce bounce rate. They really do work, unless you're an overworked blogger who's running an agency, writing a book and has 2 kids under the age of 10:

1. Answer questions. When someone comes to your site, they're probably not thinking "Gee, I wonder what their office looks like." Instead, they're asking, "Do you have the mountain bike I really want"? Which question do you answer? Answer the latter and you'll keep more visitors. (Inspired by Specialized.com)
2. Simplify. Believe it or not, every person in your company does not get to contribute one link to your home page. The average person is most comfortable processing 5-7 choices at a time. Don't overwhelm them. Simplify by removing options or at least grouping and prioritizing them. How many links does Google have on their home page? How about Apple? Look at your traffic reports, find out what visitors really want, and then link to that and only that. If anyone in your office whines, blame me.
3. Remove autoplay videos. My first reflex if a video starts playing and music that sounds like a bad 70's porn flick comes streaming out of my speakers is to hit the back button. I'm willing to bet most people feel the same way. Remove the video altogether, or at least have it paused.
4. Improve pageload time. If your home page takes more than 8 seconds to look intelligible, you're probably shedding visitors. Note I said 'look intelligible', not 'load completely'. If there's a huge image or a video that takes longer, that's OK, as long as it doesn't prevent the rest of the page from loading. Trim 2-3 seconds off your pageload time and watch the bounce rate drop. Proof? When I first relaunched my blog, a bug in the code led to 10-15 second load times. Once we fixed it, the bounce rate dropped by 30%.
5. Write a better headline. A punchy, take-action headline will keep visitors. Instead of "Enterprise Security Solutions for A Web 2.0 Workplace", try "Protect Your Network" (I made this example up).
6. Move the important stuff up. If you have a store, show products near the top of the page. If you're promoting a candidate, put that message at the top. Always put your call to action up high, front-and-center. If you're uncomfortable doing that, you may have the wrong call to action.
7. Dump the popup. I shouldn't even have to say this any more, but if you have a popup or other annoyance on your home page, get rid of it. You're losing a lot more than you're gaining, plus you're making me hate you.

Given some of the great comments I've received lately I'll wait for for your replies with bated breath...

As an internet marketer I spend more time helping business-to-business clients than business-to-consumer. So it's nice to see someone write a book pointing out how many ways you can build B-to-B leads using the internet.

MarketingSherpa's B-to-B Lead Generation Handbook goes beyond the internet and also talks about direct mail, conferences and the like. But at its core it's a guide to internet marketing. It covers everything from landing pages to lead management to pay-per-click marketing, with a focus on getting business leads.

It's not perfect, though. I'll talk about the not-so-good first, and then point out the good stuff:

Take the Good with the Bad

First, note that this is a massive book. It's over 500 pages. If you have a bad back or a fear of heavy objects, you may want to skip it. The 500+ pages are stuffed with great data and tips that even a crusty marketer like me has to admit I hadn't thought of before.

Second, this book covers a huge array of topics and disciplines: Intradepartmental politics, direct mail, trade show marketing, search marketing and CRM are just a sample. So it doesn't dive deeply into any of them. That shallow-but-broad approach works well if you're a head of sales or marketing who wants to get a lead building campaign going, or an SEO consultant wanting to learn how this kind of marketing works. If you're a search marketing pro looking to get better at SEO, don't go here.

Third, it's pricey. $697 pricey.. Actually Marketing Sherpa is offering a $200 discount if you buy from this link: $495.

Finally, the spiral binding makes the book a pain to read in bed. OK, OK, maybe I'm the only internet marketing geek sick enough to read a marketing encyclopedia in bed, but every time I dropped the damned book I'm sure I woke my wife up. Throw me a bone, will ya, MarketingSherpa? Give me a multi-volume set of thinner books next time?

Or Just Take the Good

This book has so much good advice I stopped highlighting and marking pages. I just keep it on my desk as a reference. Forehead smackers I should've known but never thought of included some great trade show marketing techniques, options for tweaking PPC campaigns (hint: even if you're creating lots of separate ad groups, you still don't have enough) and ways to win over the IT department. They thought of everything.

It's also stuffed with raw data: Campaign performance, marketing surveys and the kind of information that, if you're selling a lead generation campaign to your boss or a client, is absolutely priceless.

I also nearly wept with joy to hear someone else write about winning over sales teams, tracking cost per lead and tying pay per click marketing into Salesforce.

Read It.

If you're serious about lead generation, you have to read this book. Go order it, then go lift some weights to get in shape so you can carry it around when it arrives.

I'm very flattered. Her other interviewees include folks like Microsoft's CTO and the creator of the California Raisins (the cool dancing guys - if you don't know who they are, ignore me 'cause I'm old).

Here are seven tips that, if I hear them any more, may force me to stab myself in the face:

1. 'Write what your readers want'. Really. Never would've thoughta that.
2. 'Brand generates customer loyalty'. True since 0 BC, when my ancestors ignored a guy with much better branding. We've paid for it ever since. Why do folks say that and then puff up like they just revolutionized advertising?
3. 'Write copy that attracts links'. Nah. I'm going to specifically write copy that repels links. I tell all my clients to do that.
4. 'Write great content'. Wow. I didn't get this the first 1,202,123 times someone wrote it, but now I do! I'll stop writing boring B.S. now. Thanks!!!
5. 'Companies should talk to customers'. When I see how some companies talk to their customers I question this. But it really makes me twitch when a blogger says this one day and then says companies "can't converse" the next.
6. 'Persuade key influencers'. I won't even dignify that one with an answer.
7. 'Cultivate emotional involvement in your brand'. Walk up to me and say that in person. I dare you.

If you find yourself writing these tips in a blog post, try not writing anything instead. Everyone with a smidgen of intelligence already knows them.

There are closer to 7,000 stupid, overused, useless tips flying around in the marketing world. If you have a few, feel free to post 'em in comments.

It's the only possible reason for some of the asinine hiring decisions made by otherwise intelligent people. So, in the tradition of bloggers giving audiences what they want, here's my ten steps to hire an SEO firm that will bury you in the rankings and cost you money:

1. Look for lousy writers: Search engine optimization involves a lot of words and stuff. So whatever you do, don't hire a consultant or firm who can actually string together a sentence. You want people who write things like "Your going to love our service!". (If you can't find the error in that sentence, congrats! You're halfway there.)
2. Look for barefoot cobblers: Find SEO companies with web sites that drive away the search engines. For example, make sure they link to their home page at 'www.mysite.com/index.htm'. And for God's sake, if they use heading tags for headings, don't hire them! That kind of thing might help you move up! [by the way, these examples are taken from an actual SEO firm's web site - I'm happy to refer them if you want to disappear from the rankings]
3. Make sure they don't have Pagerank. Google Pagerank doesn't mean much, but if that little bar is gray, then that SEO really sucks. Since you want bad rankings, hire them right away. They'll deliver.
4. Trust the developers: A surefire way to truly wreck your SEO campaign! When your IT person or developer snorts and says "I read a couple books, I know SEO", jump for joy. Your search is complete. Have them fill your site with duplicate content, impossible linking schemes and nested redirects. You can have an utterly invisible site without even lifting a finger.
5. Trust the designers: Almost as good as the previous tip. When your designer says "Oh, that 100% Flash opening page won't be a problem. Google can crawl Flash now.", trust them. Hear that 'poof' sound? That was air rushing into the place your site previously occupied. Congrats.
6. Don't trust the experts: Guys like Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts and little companies like Google have been trying to give you advice on hiring a good SEO for years. If you listen, you'll end up hiring one. So ignore everything they say.
7. Hire someone who guarantees a top position: If they promise you a number one ranking on Google, they can deliver, right? Maybe, if the phrase is something like 'hassenplarfer' or 'hufflebwump'. If the SEO you're talking to guarantees rankings, you've struck gold. They're not only incompetent, they're liars, too.
8. Hire folks who throw around arbitrary numbers: Brilliant quotes like "You need 305 links to get a top ranking on Google" are a sure sign you've found a real loser. If your internet marketing plan includes being SEO roadkill, you're in luck.
9. Hire a friend's cousin's daughter's sister's half brother who's really "good with computers": Perfect. Not only will the search engines poop all over you, but you'll get to have lots of tense moments in your personal life, too. And you'll be stuck with this git for the next 10 years. Nicely done!
10. Don't pay more than $500 a month. If someone tells you they'll charge $5,000, gasp and hang up the phone. Find some nice, ethical folks who say they can do the work for $149.

Phew. Chances are that somewhere in your search for an SEO, you encountered good, quality practitioners who could've moved you up in the rankings with smart, ethical advice. You had a few close brushes with success. But if you followed my 10 tips then you've made it, and defeat is at hand. I salute you.

"But Iaaannnnnnnnnn I just don't have any tiiimmmmmeeeee...."

It's true. You're busy. You've got stuff to do like answering e-mails, answering phone calls, checking out that YouTube video someone just sent you or otherwise giving in to the information tsunami.

Or, you can unplug your phone.

Close your e-mail software.

Put a little egg timer on your desk.

And do this 3-hour internet marketing tune-up. If it doesn't improve your results, I'll quit eating Kit Kats for a whole day.

Prerequisites:

• Web analytics software, like Google Analytics.
• A 3-digit IQ is very helpful.
• Access to your site, or someone who can make small changes for you. Just schedule a 3-hour block of time with them and get them to sit down at your desk or at least on the phone with you. They can do all this work in 3 hours, no problem.. If they can't, fire their lame, sorry, under-performing butts and hire someone with intelligence and the ambition to use it.

0:00 to 0:15: Where's Your Traffic Coming From?

First, log into your analytics software.

Find your top keywords report, and see what unpaid (also know as 'organic') key phrases are driving traffic to your site:

These key phrases are your primary traffic drivers (at least from search). They're what folks want to see when they land on your site.

Stands to reason that, if you can give them what they're looking for, they're more likely to take action.

0:16 to 1:00: Where's that Traffic Going? Finding the Target and 'Hot' Pages

For each key phrase, do the following:

1. Go to Google, Yahoo! and Live.
2. Search for the phrase.
3. Find your site listing:
4. Click it, and note the page to which that listing leads:
   

Those ten pages are your target pages. Write them down.

One more thing: In your analytics software, find the top 5-10 most-visited pages on your site. Those are your hot pages. Write them down, too. You'll need them later.

Now you know what folks are looking for, and where they're going on your site to find it.

It's time to give them what they want.

1:00 to 2:00: Optimize Target Pages

Go to each target page and make sure that you have:

1. The key phrase in the title tag of the page. Yes, I know this may mess up your SEO plans. But you want more clicks, right? Chances are there's a way to work it into the title tag that keeps your SEO strategy intact.
2. The key phrase in the heading of the page. See number 1 if your SEO person starts to freak out.
3. The key phrase in the first paragraph of the page. You may want it in bold, too, or emphasized.
4. A clear call to action to do something that you want them to do. It could be 'buy now' or 'subscribe to this blog' or just 'click here to read more'. But there is something you want them to do. Make sure you tell them.
5. No silly errors. See those weird characters on my tutorial page? Those gotta go.
6. The page must load in 5-10 seconds on a broadband connection. If it doesn't, I guarantee you're shedding visitors my guinea pigs shed fur. Compress images, remove images, dump the video. Do whatever you have to do to improve the load time.

Here's my page after I did some of this tweaking:

Simple stuff. You can, of course, do more. I just added a few words, and a call to action at the bottom of the page:

I also fixed the weird characters.

If this part takes more than an hour, don't worry about it. I left a lot of extra time at the end, just in case.

2:01 to 3:00: Spread the Word - Optimize the Hot Pages

Now your target pages are much improved. Next step: Get the same phrases represented on your home page and other hot pages.

This step's easy in theory, but can be hard if someone's got a stick up their rear end about having top billing on the home page or some such. If that's a problem, take a deep breath, get out your analytics data and show them why you want to make the change. If that doesn't work, take a deep breath, pick up a chair and hit them with it. While they're recuperating in the hospital you can make your change and show them how well it worked.

You've got a few options here, and I can't really give you specific steps, but here are some ideas:

• Add a 'popular' or 'featured' list to every page, and include the target pages for the top 10 phrases there. This works well on blogs and in stores.
• Create a single 'hub' page for all 10 featured phrases. That's what I did.
• Place the top 1 or 2 front-and-center on the home page. Many stores do this with a 'featured products' section.
• Do some cross-linking with other relevant information or products. If you have a store, link to the featured products from the top 10-20 items. If you have an informational site, or you're getting leads, link to the featured information from other relevant pages.

Hopefully you get the idea. If not, leave a comment below and I'll try to provide more examples.

DING

OK. Chances are your timer's gone off, and you're done. Nice job! Go get a latte.

You Just Did Some Internet Marketing! Woo hoo!

You found out what folks want. You found out where they go on your site trying to find it. Then you made it easier for them to act.

If every business owner who had a website did this 3-hour exercise once a month, I'd be out of business.

Fortunately, that seems pretty unlikely.

Some folks have told me they can't find 3 hours a month to do this exercise. Possible ways to free up 3 hours per month include: Sleeping 6 fewer minutes a day; fast forwarding through the first 10 minutes of a few shows; skipping Starbucks once a week...

If you switch from one web analytics package to another, be ready to make some adjustments in your metrics goals.

Web Analytics Q & A

How many switched to, say, Google Analytics, Omniture or Urchin 6?

OK, last question: How many of you nearly got fired when your visitors, pageviews or other metrics inexplicably plunged?

Chances are you aren't suffering from bad statistics. You're a victim of metrics madness: The lack of standards in site traffic measurement.

The Horror of Metric Madness

Late last year we launched a shiny new web site for a client. It's beautiful, if I may say so.

As part of that launch, we switched them from a creaky, old, log-file-only WebTrends installation to Google Analytics (note my comment at the beginning - WebTrends is great. Just don't use a 5+ year-old version).

Four weeks ago I got a wake-up call. Pageviews and unique visits to the site had dropped 10% over the previous year.

December 2006: 300,000 pageviews
December 2007: 270,000 pageviews
(numbers changed to protect the innocent, percentages the same)

For this client that's pretty grim: They'd seen steady growth (thanks in part to SEO) before 2008.

Those Missing Pageviews

So, where did those pageviews go? And come to mention it, why didn't they go up, instead of down? Have I lost my touch?

Nope.

We'd switched the client from WebTrends, a tool that measured traffic using log files and nothing else, to Google Analytics, which measures traffic using a fancy javascript.

The Difference Between Log and Javascript Tracking

Warning: Geeky stuff ahead. If your eyes roll back in your head at words like 'log file analysis', skip ahead to 'Analytics Package Conversion Factors'.

The WebTrends installation my client had used the server logs to count visits and pageviews. It counted any page load by any visitor as a pageview. Even if the visitor started to view the page and then clicked away before a full pageload.

Google Analytics, on the other hand, waits until the entire page loads. The javascript that Google Analytics uses to count a pageview loads at the bottom of the page. If the whole page doesn't load then Google won't count it. Visiting search engine spiders and other non-javascript browsers don't execute the javascript at all, so those pageviews never get counted.

Third-party tools like Compete.com further reduce pageviews and visits because they're not measuring 100% of traffic to your site. They get a random sampling based on either traffic through your ISP or toolbar installations (like Alexa.com).

All of this can cause a perceived but artificial drop of as much as 50% in both pageviews and visitors. It's often less, but it depends on the original configuration. Here are some rough percentages based on my experience:

Web Analytics Package Conversion Factors

These numbers are from sites I've worked on, not the entire internet. While I've been around the block more times than I care to count, take 'em with a grain of salt.

From Urchin using UTM.js to Google Analytics: 20% drop
From Log file-only WebTrends or Urchin to Google Analytics: 30-50% drop
From Webalyzer to Google Analytics: 20-30% drop
From Google Analytics to Compete.com: 20-60% drop

3rd-party sites like Compete.com are tougher: A busier, more popular web site may see only a small drop. A smaller, less popular one may see a very large drop. A smaller initial audience leads to a smaller sample and a larger drop.

Generally, you'll see an apparent drop in pageviews and visits whenever you switch from a logfile-based analytics tool to a javascript 'bug' based tool like Google Analytics. And you'll see another drop when you compare javascript-based analytics to a 3rd party toolbar or internet service provider-based tool like Compete.com.

Two Tests To Save Your Job

So, your boss or client is really pissed. It looks like you've cost them a big chunk of traffic. Your life, or at least your career, is about to come to a messy end. There's plastic spread on the boss's floor.

Here's how you save yourself:

Use Compete.com

Go to Compete.com. Look at the trend over the time period in question.

For example, let's say I moved my blog from Urchin to Google Analytics January 1, 2008. My own data shows a drop in visits:

These numbers are made up, by the way.

I take a deep breath, go to Compete and look at the same period:

Ah HAH! My pageviews didn't drop. I'm just seeing the effects of a switchover from log- to javascript-based tracking.

Run a Logfile Tool On Current Data

If you have access to the log files on your web site, why not point a log file analysis tool like Urchin or WebTrends at the logs? Then you can compare your visitors and pageviews across multiple analytics packages, figure out the difference and adjust accordingly.

Chances are your web hosting provider already has some form of basic log file analysis running on your server. It might be pretty crude, but you only need the most basic stats: Visits and page views.

Don't Panic

Different analytics packages measure different ways. There is no central standard for web traffic analysis.

So, if you move from one web analytics tool to another, and your numbers plunge, do a little double-checking before you panic.

I know Danny Sullivan wrote a great piece about how Yahoo! is not dead yet. But he also points out, in the same article, that it's sort of up to Yahoo! to make sure everyone knows they're not internet roadkill just yet.

Most important (to me, anyway) is that they convince me, the internet marketer, that they're still alive.

Alas. From where I sit, Yahoo! is lying in the middle of the pavement, yellow line drawn right over their butt, tongue hanging out in a pretty good imitation of the newly dead.

Case in point: About 8 or 10 weeks ago, I sent a note to Yahoo! asking if they'd add Conversation Marketing to Yahoo! Buzz. I never heard back.

That's bad enough. I mean, I'm hardly an A-lister, but I'm not just any jackass, either. I'm a jackass with clients who buy advertising. You'd think Yahoo! would want to at least send me a rejection note.

But it gets better. Today, I got this:

Note the godawful creative. Not only am I married, I'm also heterosexual. And I'm a geek - when I pick up a drill my wife calls the ER to reserve a space. They could have picked a worse image, I guess, if they'd shown me Dolph Lungren skinning a deer or something...

The key language: "...prepare to launch out of beta in the coming months..."

Months.

To launch a web application that's been built many times before.

Months.!???

You @#$)(*!@ losers. Ten other social networks will have launched, been acquired for $100 million and shut down by the time you launch Buzz. If you can't get Yahoo! Buzz up and running after all this time, then you are well and truly finished.

Go download a copy of Pligg and use that. You can have a site up in a couple weeks.

People need to stop bitching about Google being evil. If you want evil, look at Yahoo!'s current 'leadership' and what they've done to a great company.

And yes, this e-mail annoyed the heck out of me. What was your first clue?

Blatant Plug: I run an internet marketing agency that does stuff like search engine optimization. You can learn more about them here.

But, I finally got it working. From now on, all author links on my blog will be 'dofollowed'. Andy Beard's posts on the subject persuaded me.

It was one hell of a struggle though, and I think it's worth posting the procedure.

Deactivating 'Nofollow' In Movable Type 4

First, make sure you don't have any old, leftover plugins from Movable Type 3:

1. Log into Movable Type.
2. Go to System Overview >> Plugins.
3. Look for nofollow.pl. If it's there, deactivate it.

Now, turn off the built in 'nofollow' tool in Movable Type 4. This is really easy, if you happen to know that Movable Type 4 cleverly hides this feature:

Do you see any checkbox saying 'Nofollow'? Do you? WELL DO YOU?!!!

Cough. Sorry. It was a little frustrating. Here's how you can avoid the frustration and add years to your life:

1. Check that little box that reads 'allow HTML'.
2. Voila! A whole new menu appears:
   
3. Ah HAH! Uncheck the magic box next to "Apply 'nofollow' to URLs".
4. All links in comments and trackbacks will no longer have 'nofollow' attached to them.

Why 'Nofollow'?

If I just did all this work to turn off nofollow, why did anyone create it in the first place?

When you post a comment on most blogs, you create a link back to your own web site, or whatever web site you specify.

Early on in the blogging age, folks abused the heck out of comments, submitting thousands of junk comments to gain links. Those links, in turn, helped the abusers move up in the search engine rankings.

The solution: Search engines started looking for a 'nofollow' attribute attached to links. With that attribute attached, the search engines ignored those links.

So, blog software added the 'nofollow' attribute to all comments.

Why 'Dofollow'?

Now, blogs have better spam controls. It's relatively easy for me to check incoming comments and filter out the Cialis ads.

If someone takes the time to contribute to my blog by making a comment, I can pay them back a bit with a real link. It creates a stronger community, I think, by rewarding an honest effort.

So, I'm dofollowing from now on.

But no, I still won't publish your ads for herbal supplements.

Special thanks to Brad Choate for hearing my desperate crys for help.

Yet links back to authors within comments still show as 'nofollow'. I've flushed the cache, rebuilt templates and

I'm using Movable Type 4. Their documentation is slightly worse than useless.

So I'm throwing myself upon the mercy of my readers: Has anyone managed to 'dofollow' their comment author links in Movable Type 4? If so, can you let me know what you did?

Since I've already built my own Prius web site I figured I'd sign up.

Here's the form they threw at me:

I don't think so!

If you want folks to sign up for a social network, where they will do the work, they will create the content and they will support the community, ask for their e-mail address and a password.

Get the rest of the information later.

Otherwise it feels like you're going through passport control...

Woo hoo! Party! We can now design every web site on the internet in 100% Flash!

Not so fast.

While Google's announcement sounds exciting, there are still significant search engine optimization and more general internet marketing issues that they haven't addressed:

Link Value

Yes, Google will crawl all those links in your Flash animation. But will they accord them the same value as links in an HTML page? They're not saying.

I've long suspected that Google and Yahoo! award less or no value to links in Acrobat PDF files. That makes me think that Flash links won't carry much weight, either.

Yes, this is conjecture. But it's conjecture informed by years of betting chocolate on just these kinds of questions, so I have a strong incentive and track record.

Text Value

Again, will keywords and the like in Flash files get the same attention? Probably not. Here's why:

• Semantic markup: You can't designate (as far as I know) level one and two headings in a Flash file. So there's no way to show search engines the structure of your Flash content.
• Paragraph markup: There's also no

  tag that I know of in Flash. Another semantic markup issue.

Again, this is conjecture. But I reviewed the SWF specification and don't see how you provide semantic markup. I'm all for playing it safe, and Flash content usually looks like gobbledygook when you try to read it with a spider.

Opacity

Not the web kind, the information kind.

Google is secretive enough with their regular crawler algorithms, but we can use text-only browsers like Lynx to see how our sites will behave for a spider.

No such luck with Flash. How do we test for SEO happiness?

Usability

Flash still has all the same usability bugaboos. If your home page takes 10-20 seconds to load and then dances around like a spastic jitterbug, you're going to lose customers no matter how easily they find you.

So my advice: Continue to exercise caution with Flash. Watch how the rankings shake out over the next few months. Then think about how you might work Flash into your internet marketing strategy.

Related: An SEO Workflow that Works

My creative lead pointed out that 2008 has, so far, been a truly great year for godawful advertising. So I'm stepping away from internet marketing for a moment to bring you the worst 5 ads of the year (and maybe of late 2007):

Number 5: WAMU Wahoo!

Anyone remember this one? Probably not, since it was immediately buried in a wave of layoffs and horrific financials. But it's painful nonetheless.

I hope WAMU's CMO, if they have one, is either hiding her head in shame or looking for a new job after this beaut.

The motto manages to be uninformative yet easy to mock while insulting the intended audience (generation Y) at the same time. Good job guys!

Number 4: McDonalds Iced Espresso: Cold, not Snobby

What? Huh?

Oooooh, I get it. You're telling me that going into a filthy fast food restaurant to get my coffee means I'm not a snob. Got it! Hahahahahahah! You guys made a funny!

McDonalds invested who-knows-how-much to get this great motto: "Cold, not snobby". Then they built a nice, slow-loading Flash site to remind you what going to McDonalds is really like.

I thought their early coffee ads were pretty clever. But "cold, not snobby" allows so many interpretations you have to wonder if their marketing team dropped acid before their brainstorming session.

Number 3: Enfatico's Self-Promotional Ad

Enfatico, the ad agency created by WPP to serve Dell and only Dell, launched an ad promoting themselves before their first Dell pieces went public.

Um.

If you're only working for Dell, why do you need to advertise?

And won't your client be a teensy bit mad when they realize that, instead of working on their stuff, you were creating your own?

This one didn't make my list for being lousy. It made my list for displaying bad judgment matched only by Donald Rummsfeld saying "stuff happens".

Number 2: Tukwila Life!

If you don't live in Seattle, you don't get the joke, but trust me, it's funny.

My company is actually located in Tukwila, and it's not a bad place.

But in trying to promote its centennial, the city hired some unknown ad expert to come up with the brilliant motto "Tukwila Life!"

Tukwila is 90% shopping mall, 10% river and greenspace. It's a great place to have an office.

But yelling "Tukwila Life" is like me yelling "Six pack abs!". It's so far from the truth that I'm just embarrassing myself.

Better luck next time, guys.

Number 1: Say WA

This is from last year, I'll admit, but it will probably win for the next decade.

The state of Washington paid Foote Cone & Belding some ungodly amount of money to develop a new motto and campaign for the state.

The result? Say WA

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? DID YOU GUYS LOSE YOUR FREAKING MINDS? SAY WA?

Even worse, the state then used the tag line, realizing how utterly moronic it sounded only after the tourism board said "Hey, the emperor's buck naked!".

Now we have 'Metronatural', which while more obscure is still embarrassing. So this campaign is crap squared, and therefore wins.

Got any other horrible ad campaigns to add to the list?

Seeing a great old franchise turned to so much stinking manure me to thinking about some old things that do still work for us internet marketers:

1. Blogging Carnivals. I always seem to forget about this, but if you want to build links and network with like-minded folks, blog carnivals are fantastic. Try BlogCarnival.com if you want to see what it's like. Very little involved in getting started, and the payoffs are enormous.
2. Pay per click marketing. Yes, it's more expensive. But no other internet marketing tool beats PPC for control, targeting and the ability to manage ROI.
3. Search engine optimization. You knew I'd bring this one up. Shoemoney may think I'm a git for believing in it but low-key, visibility-focused SEO is a relatively small investment, and search engines still have the same reason for living: To deliver relevant stuff.
4. Writing. See, pretty pictures are great, but they don't tell me a hell of a lot. Two lines of well-written copy will get you more sales than any video, talking-head animation or cheesy design.
5. Analytics. After everything I've written on this blog about analytics, if you don't have Google Analytics or something else on your site yet, I give up.
6. Directories. Yes, directories are still around. Sites like shop5.com don't charge you and list your site where folks come looking for your services and products. It's true that spamming your link out to 1,000 directories probably won't help as much with SEO as it used to, but directories are still nice traffic drivers.
7. E-mail. E-mail marketing is still an amazing direct marketing tool, if you do it right. Don't ignore the house list.
8. Old farts. I'm old, or at least approaching old: 40 in 3 weeks. In the last year I've ruptured 2 discs, cracked teeth, had my eyes go even worse, have hair falling out faster than ever, and I've got freckles that are no longer called freckles - they're "age spots". But I'm still pretty useful. Fire off a question now and then and I'll do my best to answer.

So, my recommendation: Skip Indiana Jones. Work on your website instead.

Apparently that fast.

I just did a little test, took a random blog and bookmarked it using the ma.gnolia.com bookmarking service.

I searched Google for the address of the bookmarked site 10 minutes later and there it was in the results:

I've talked before about Google's incredibly fast blog search updates. This is a little different.

Why it Matters in Internet Marketing

If your client says "Oh, it's OK. Those busted pages won't get picked up by Google for a few weeks anyway." pick up a medium-weight book and drop it on their foot. Twice.

I'm not saying Google will crawl everything as frequently and as fast as they crawl the 'latest bookmarks' page on a major site. But you have to be mindful that they could crawl and add your new pages in minutes or hours.

That means you need to:

• Have your TITLE tags in order before you launch the new pages;
• Have any potential search engine roadblocks removed BEFORE launch. Not after; and
• Include the major bookmarking services, like Ma.gnolia.com and Del.icio.us, in any launch strategy.

Ignore this advice at your peril. Soon, Google may be indexing stuff using time travel. I dunno...

Wordze is another keyword-mining system similar to WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, with some critical additions I'll talk about in a minute. With Wordze, you can figure out how folks will search for you.

Trackur finds a wide range of social media mentions of a particular phrase. With Trackur, you can figure out who's talking about you.

The two together make a heck of a team. Here's how:

Wordze: Keyword Mining for Internet Marketing

If you've used other keyword mining tools,
Wordze will look very familiar. You can type in a keyword, find synonyms and see how many folks are searching for particular phrases:

The stats are great, and divided into 30-day chunks which I love. The 'Dig' feature is fun to play with, too (if you're a hopeless marketing geek like me).

But the features that really set Wordze apart, by a million trillion miles, are:

• They have an API and they make it available to all subscribers. You don't have to pay them $99999 extra, or do anything else. You can directly query their system from your own scripts. I nearly swooned when I saw that. Seriously. My wife looked at me like I was insane.
• It has a very speedy keyword density tool. Not a huge deal except that it's nicely integrated into the rest of their toolset, so you can take the density report and feed it right into a keyword mining project.
• Their competitive research tool is extremely cool. I'm not sure I'd depend on it (your brain is still better at this kind of stuff, plus it had trouble picking up EDU and GOV links) but it's a nice way to check your assumptions.

But really they had me with the API.

How I Used It Today

I've been battling to get Conversation Marketing into the top 10 for 'internet marketing' forever. I'll bob up to the 3rd page of Google results, then slump back to the 5th page. For a long-time SEO like me, it's utterly humiliating. I'm starting to feel like Sisyphus. So I ran a report:

I'm not a great believer in KEI as a measurement tool, but a lower number means it'll be tougher to get a good ranking. Whoa. No wonder it's been so hard.

But given the massive number of searches, it's probably worth it. In the mean time, I'll have a look at 'strategic internet marketing', which is not as busy but still a nice phrase.

So, Wordze helped me find out why I'm hitting a brick wall, ranking-wise. It also helped me find an easier niche keyword. And their competitive research tool told me I need about 20,000 more links if I have a prayer of moving up. Sigh.

You can sign up for Wordze here.

Trackur: Seeing Who Said What

Since links are going to be so critical, I wanted to see if my submissions to a blog carnival got me any new ones in the social media world.

I can do that by hand, using Google Blog Search, Google Reader, searching Twitter and checking all the other big aggregators like Technorati.

Or, I can pay about $20/month and use Trackur to find all the information in one place. Since I'm still lazier than I am poor, I elected to try out Trackur. I logged in, typed in my name, and bingo, I got a list of every blogger or Twitterer who's used it in vain:

I immediately learned that Blog Carnivals Are A Good Thing. I submitted a few articles to an e-mail marketing carnival last night, and I've already picked up a few nice mentions. Woo hoo!

Now, though, I need to start submitting to some internet marketing carnivals. I've got a long way to go.

Why Pay For It...

...if you can get the same data for free? Easy: It takes me about 30 minutes to pull all this data together if I do it on my own. That comes to about $75 of my time, on a cheap day. Or, I can spend $20 or even $100 a month, which is a lot cheaper (I'm too lazy to do the math) and then do more important stuff, like try to get that Gladiator's Belt of Ultimate Pain Infliction in WoW.

You can sign up for Trackur here.

Two Tools For One Purpose

Pull them together and these two tools help you do one thing: Become more discoverable for the right concepts.

Wordze helps you nail down the phrases folks will use to find you.

Trackur helps you see who's talking about you in the same breath as those phrases.

Put 'em together and you can influence the conversation in your favor.

Yes, I'm an affiliate. If you buy these tools from the links on this page, I'll make a dime or two. If you think I'm selling out, well yeah, I am. I make $0.35 a day on this blog right now, literally, so gimme a break. Plus, you'll note I don't debase myself for just any keyword research or social media gadget. These two are extraordinary.

Yet.

Why? Because:

1. I have yet to see mobile search earn a real return on investment. A warm feeling that I'm doing Really New Stuff, yes. Dollars and cents, no.
2. Using mobile search marketing tools is about as easy as drinking a glass of water while standing on your head.
3. The average American or Canadian is more likely to use their cell phone to pick their nose than to browse the web, find a place to shop or otherwise search for stuff.
4. The average American or Canadian cellular plan works where people live. Where they can already find everything they need. Where do cells tend to crap out? In other cities, in the middle of nowhere and everywhere else it might be really, really nice to use your phone to find something you really need.
5. Data plans actually make voice plans look good. Why would I pay $.99 to find a restaurant? I keep waiting for a cell provider to charge by the letter...
6. Cell phone browsers are awful. Yes, I know, the iPhone is the greatest thing since Vicodin, etc. etc.. But even assuming you can display a web page on AT&T's slow-as-molasses network, there are all those other handsets out there. On those, the average browser looks like a game of Pong.
7. Finally, no one in North America seems to understand how to code a site for easy mobile browsing. How many times do I have to explain what 'standards compliant' means?!

OK, done ranting. Wake me up when mobile search actually means something.

Don't believe me? Read why I think it'll happen by 2015:

Anti-trust Won't Be An Issue

By then, no one will worry about a Googleopoly. Google will face major competition in the growing mobile search space. The Powers That Be will have already forced Google to give up pre-installing Android as the only option on cell phones in exchange for the giant's purchase of Yahoo! Mobile.

Their smaller market share in the two fastest-growing economies (China and India) will make them look (gasp) vulnerable to foreign competition. And the ongoing EU boycott will continue to eat away at Google's share in Europe.

Plus, someone else will create a better semantically-intelligent search tool. Maybe Google will buy 'em. Maybe they won't be able to. 7 years is a long time, and they're going to face more competition by then.

If the SEC really gets on Google's case, they can spin off the XBOX and Office divisions and throw 'em a bone.

Microsoft Still Won't Get It

So far, Microsoft's answering salvo in the search wars is bribing visitors with half-baked discount schemes.

Um.

If they can't match the algorithm and the advertising model, they're doomed to being, at best, a distant second in North American search.

At the same time, by 2015 their share of the desktop and applications markets will be whittled to a fraction of the present. Apple keeps nibbling here and there; open-source alternatives to the increasingly bloated Office suite are getting better and better; Vista repels enterprise customers.

Lack of Visionaries

Bill Gates isn't there any more. Remember how he totally righted the ship when Netscape looked like they were going to dominate the browser market?

Who here even remembers what Netscape looked like?

Not me. It doesn't even matter that the first Internet Explorer versions were crap. Netscape couldn't keep up with the rate at which Microsoft improved IE. Whine if you want, but IE was the best PC browser for quite a while (in my opinion, Firefox now owns that title).

Ballmer can throw all the chairs he wants. He still can't do what Bill Gates could: Formulate a winning technology and strategy. Most of the leaders who could do that are gone.

Financial Resources, and How They Use Them

Google has a bad day when their stock falls below $540. They have big, sticky gobs of capital at their disposal, and they're using it to research and innovate.

Microsoft uses their capital to rearrange the Office Toolbar and create coffee table computers. Didn't anyone tell them computers are supposed to get smaller?

Intellectual Resources, and How They Use Them

Google can't remain the workers' paradise forever. But they continue to promote and encourage innovation by employees. Given their size, they have a relatively lean management structure and employees have flexibility (I'm focusing on the search division here - no comment on the others).

Microsoft can't help but stifle innovation. Their organization is so ponderous that I can't even find someone below the Manager position any more. Why do you think Yahoo! ran screaming from the buyout offer? Not over $5/share, that's for sure. They knew they'd have no chance of creating cool new stuff once they became one with the mighty M.

Microsoft's Expertise

No one knows more about getting a piece of software (Windows) to work and play with the thousands of crappy pieces of hardware that manufacturers throw out there than Microsoft.

A lot of Windows' bad rap comes from the fact that the PC hardware environment is so open. If Jake's Graphics Card and Floppy Emporium releases a new piece of garage-built hardware, some idiot will buy it, pop it in their PC and then write ranting blog post when Windows screams and dies.

You have to give props to Microsoft on this: They have done an amazing job handling more pieces of hardware and software. That's what they can offer someone like Google. And Google will run head-on into this problem when they make their first serious play for your desktop. And they will.

It'll Just Make Sense

Microsoft's continuing work on database systems and e-commerce-driven search (assuming they keep it up) will make a nice addition to Google's stable, which by then will likely also include the Pentagon and Haliburton.

Don't Blame Google

Before you start hand-wringing and saying how evil Google is, think about this: Everyone. Else. Sucks.

Yahoo is the only half-servicable search engine out there besides the big GOOG, and they're too busy fighting off takeover attempts from sweaty CEOs.

I sweat like a pig, so I feel your pain, Steve. But can I suggest wearing an undershirt or something?

Don't ask Google to change. Ask their competitors to get their poop together.

So bookmark this post and check on it in 2015, assuming we're all here and not under 10 feet of water. Betcha I'm right.

I'm happy. She's happy. We have two great kids. What else is there?

You can read it in PDF here:

Stuck in the Dark Ages

So then someone from DMNews calls me, asking how I'll take advantage of getting published.

I told her I'd like to put an image of the page up on my blog and company site with a link back to DMNews. I told her I'd capture the whole page, so DMNews would get exposure.

She said no, and that I'd have to pay $1100 to get the right to repost and resend it.

Bwah? So, you want to charge me to put a link to your site on my blog and put your logo in front of everyone?

All this does is give me incentive to not write for DMNews. I'd get more readers if the article got a Sphinn anyway.

Thanks guys.

Potential clients ask me more and more, "Why should I spend $10,000 [or any other amount] on internet marketing every month? What will I get for it?"

I don't know.

I'll say it again:

I. Don't. Know.

I can no more predict the results of an internet marketing campaign than I can predict the price of oil 10 years from now. There are no guarantees. So, when you ask this annoying, annoying question, you give me 2 choices: I can lie. Or I can be honest and lose the job to the next guy, who will undoubtedly lie.

What I can tell you is:

• However your campaign starts, it will consistently improve, because we can test stuff;
• It will cost you a fraction of an equally-impactful offline campaign;
• At least as far as search engine optimization and pay per click, if you ignore it you're turning away 75% of your potential online audience;
• I've never seen anyone say "Damn, I wish I'd gotten less visitors to my web site."; and
• Hesitation will only hurt you.

So, instead of asking me a question you bloody well know (or should know) is unanswerable, ask me:

• How will you report results to me?
• What are you going to do to get those results, in general terms?
• How will you track changes and adjust to them?

[Ian stomps off]

If you've ever heard these quotes, you need to read this post:

"The designers said we couldn't use this font and have it be text."
"The designers said they couldn't format the page without tables."
"It'll take us hours to change that now."
"No, you can't edit the title tags on each page."
"This is a big change. Why does it matter to SEO?"
"We can get to these SEO changes in about a month."

There's a right and wrong way to include SEO in your internet marketing mix. Throwing it in as an afterthought after your shiny new site launches is the wrong way. Here's the perfect SEO workflow.

A Basic SEO Workflow

1. Initial project planning: Meet with an SEO expert. Pay them for their time. Have them map out when and how the SEO team should be involved in development.
2. Information architecture: Before you create your new site map, pick your keywords and verify that they matter. Organize your keywords into topics. Be sure your architecture reflects this. Remember, this isn't just how search engines see your site. It's how people look for you, too.
3. Tools selection: If you're using a shopping cart, content management system or something else, make sure they support SEO. And no, I don't mean "SEO friendly URLs" or other trite sales speak you'll hear. I mean that these tools support unique title tags, correct semantic markup and won't turn your web site into a pile of search-repellent spaghetti.
4. Content: Let the expert help you structure and write great copy that'll also get the search engines' attention.
5. Design: As your creative team gets to work, get your SEO expert to have a glance at the design. You don't want to take, say, headings and turn them into graphical text. The SEO can work with the designers and help them find the best balance. She may know a thing or two about image replacement and other tricks that can help create a beautiful, search-friendly site, too.
6. Mockup: Sooo many companies ignore this. Have a truly great XHTML coder create templates for each unique page layout on your site. Then have your expert review for potential issues. This will make your developers' lives much, much easier, because they won't have to become HTML producers.
7. Development: Make sure the SEO team has access to the site-in-progress. They'll watch for alarm bells like uneditable title tags, straying from the mockup or hacked-up code.
8. Pre-launch: The SEO expert can use whatever tools they have to 'crawl' your site, checking for busted links, search engine roadblocks, etc..
9. Pre-launch, 2: The expert will give you a set of 301 redirects to set up, so that critical link authority isn't lost.
10. Launch: The SEO expert will join you in biting collective fingernails.
11. Post launch: Now the expert will start working on the stuff most people consider 'search engine optimization' - link building, tracking metrics, content optimization, strategy, etc..

But My Developer Says...

Don't trust your developer, designer or marketer. I say that as someone who's all three. We're full of crap when it comes to involving others in our work: We'll say "Sure, that's a great idea" and then shut out the SEO team for weeks, if not months.

And don't trust them when they say they know SEO. They know SEO like I know brain surgery: I watched it on House. I don't even trust myself to write SEO-friendly code. I have another person at my company review it. It's too hard to step back and review it from the search perspective.

When To Get Worried

Worry if:

• Your SEO team hasn't been involved in the project for more than 2 weeks.
• The SEO team is driving the rest of the team crazy. This could be OK, but it may also mean you've got personality conflicts that'll prevent a great result.
• Your designer or developer 100% agrees with everything the search team suggests. Either the search team is clueless, or the designer/developer is quietly shredding every suggestion.
• The search folks start looking hunted in status meetings.

If you see any of these things start to happen, get the whole team — designers, developers, architects and search specialists — together in one room or on the phone. Tell them what a great job they are all doing. 'Cause they probably are.

Then review communications and make sure everything's solid.

If one team's shutting another out, meet with them separately and kick their butts. Don't embarrass them. Just make sure they understand SEO is a priority.

Search-Ready From Day 1

The result of all this work: A site that's search-ready from launch. Faster upward movement in the rankings. And lower costs post-launch.

Note that I have no axe to grind here. I love it when folks skip search engine optimization until the last minute. That means I get to charge them 3-4x more than if they'd involved me and my team at the start, because we have to do a lot more work. By all means, ignore my advice. I have two college accounts to fund.

Don't read it because of my drips and drops of information, though. Look who else got involved. A veritable who's-who of SEO geekery:

Mike Belasco
SEOverflow

Mike Blumenthal
Blumenthals Local Search Blog

Mary Bowling
Blizzard Internet Marketing

Tim Coleman
Convert Offline

Miriam Ellis
Solas Web Design

Steve Espinosa
eLocal Listing

Brad Geddes
LocalLaunch

Gab Goldenberg
SEO ROI Search Marketing Services

Michael Jensen
SoloSEO

David Klein
PurposeInc.com

Alex McArthur
Orange Soda

Matt McGee
Small Business SEM

David Mihm
Portland, OR Website Design

Dave Oremland
SEO Refugee Forums

Will Scott
Search Influence

Andrew Shotland
Local SEO Guide

Bill Slawski
SEO by the Sea

Chris Silver Smith
NetConcepts

Larry Sullivan
Local Biz Bits, Augusta, GA

[Local Search Ranking Factors]

I signed up for 'Firefox Download Day', which is today.

I go to their site and see this:

Can you give me a D’OH!

My piece of internet marketing wisdom for today: If you want to try to break a download record, be sure you have the bandwidth and servers to handle it.

Oh, and you might want to test, too.

Update: 2 PM PDT - I just downloaded Firefox 3. It’s dang nifty so far. Although it did disable just about all of my plugins...

A Little Introduction

[Skip to the next section if you don't like to read background stuff.]

How many people here grew up on the East coast? (Ian raises hand)

How many people heard this quote from their mother, father or grandparent?

If your friends [insert stupid act here] would you, too? (Ian raises hand)

Mine typically involved the Brooklyn Bridge or Empire State Building. They’re big, gravity is a harsh mistress, and generally my parents though it’d make me stop and think. Cough.

In the never-ending progression towards becoming my parents, I now apply the same great quote to search engine optimization and internet marketing.

Don't Cheat Just Because Your Competitors Do

You just hired an search engine optimization firm. You know your competitor has the top spot for ‘custom made cardboard automobiles’. It makes you mad. It burns you up. Every day you go to sleep with a Google results page bouncing around behind your eyelids.

Your newly-hired SEO pro tells you the competing site is smaller, poorly-optimized and has far less history than yours. They're ranked #1 because they purchased 200 links that are blatantly for sale. They also did some other highly questionable cloaking/redirection/geek stuff.

Your reaction: Buy me links, damnit! And do that questionable stuff! Now!

Stop. Breath. Think.

If your competitor jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?

If the answer is yes, stop reading please.

Weighing The Risks

I’m not actually saying you should never, ever cheat. I’m a marketer and a lawyer. I don’t know if I’m physically capable of saying that.

But you must weigh the risks and benefits, independent of your competitor.

Just because they got away with it doesn’t mean you will.

Just because it helped them doesn’t mean it will help you.

Plus, you have no idea whether they did what they did on purpose or by accident.

See That Hammer...?

But the best reason not to follow your competitor off the bridge and start engaging in shady practices is this: The search engines may figure out what the competitor is up to tomorrow. Or, they might skip the competitor and come straight for you.

It’s not always fair. And it’s not always consistent. But see that hammer? It’s being swung by companies that are the corporate equivalent of a precocious toddler who’s just eaten twelve candy bars. There’s no telling where they’ll strike next.

In Internet Marketing, Everyone Is Standing On Their Own Bridge

The moral: You’re on your own bridge. Actions taken by your competitors may have a completely different impact on you and your business.

So make your decisions on your own. Don’t [insert stupid act here] just because they did.

By the way, the Brooklyn Bridge quote never worked on my. I jumped off the roof of my house holding a sheet over my head as a parachute when I was 8. I blew up our back yard when I was 14. I augured my mountain bike into the side of Mammoth Mountain at 40+ mph when I was 24. All following the group. I have wised up since, though...

It’s a waste. You put all that work into creating a great site. Someone makes a mistake like mis-typing a page name, or they click a bad link on someone else's site, and you drive them away with the internet equivalent of a wagging finger.

By the way, this is a competitor’s site: A marketing agency that claims to offer internet marketing. Why am I not a multi-millionaire?

You can have a much friendlier ‘page not found’ page - also known as a 404 error page:

It’s easy: If you can create a plain, static HTML web page, you can create a 404 error page. You may have to get your web host to do a little setup work, but that’s it.

I’m going to walk you through it.

Step 1: Create Your Page

1. Open your favorite HTML or web page editor.
2. Get HTML code for your site. This is easy. Open your site in a web browser and go to a simple page (I usually use ‘about us’ or something similar). Click ‘view’ and then ‘source’. Cut-and-paste that code into your editor. Voila - you have your page layout.
3. Edit the page so it follows the three principles of a good 404 error page (see below).
4. Save the page as something obvious, like 404.html.

Any 404 page should have 3 basic elements:

• A clear statement that the visitor is in the wrong place;
• Advice to help them get back on track;
• An option for getting in touch with the website owner.

You’re done with step one. Pat yourself on the back. You’ve just done something that most of the web development world apparently doesn’t understand.

Step 2: Put the Page On Your Website

Connect to your website using whatever tool you normally do. It might be an FTP client, or the ‘file manager’ that’s built into your web hosting control panel.

Upload 404.html to the server.

Navigate to http://www.yoursite.com/404.html to make sure the page looks OK.

On to step 3...

Step 3: Setting Up Your Server To Point At Your 404 Page

This is where most folks turn pale and start to sweat. Chances are some developer or grumpy web hosting company support person has told you this part’s really, really, really difficult. I mean, they don’t know how to do it, so it must be difficult, right?

Wrong.

I'm going to show you how it’s done on Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (in about 10 steps, but they’re just point-and-click) and on Apache (in 3 steps, but you have to know how to type).

Setting Up On Internet Information Server (IIS)

If you don’t use a dedicated server, you hopefully can’t do this procedure on your own. Contact your web host. If they say you can’t set this up on Microsoft’s Internet Information Server, reach through the phone, slap them hard, and then e-mail them this page.

1. Connect to your server via remote desktop connection or whatever remote access software you use.
2. Open the Internet Information Services Manager.
   
3. Wipe off your palms. See? This isn’t so scary.
4. Expand the ‘Web Sites’ folder.
   
5. Find and select your web site in the right-hand window (and no, IIS won’t be all blurry - I’m just not showing every web site we host on this server to the entire web-browsing world).
   
6. Click ‘Action’ and then pick ‘Properties’.
   
7. In the window that appears, click the ‘Custom Errors’ tab.
   
   Take a moment and wonder why your head of IT couldn’t find this.
8. Scroll down until you find ‘404’ in the ‘http error’ column. Select the one that’s just plain old 404:
9. Click ‘Edit’ and then find the 404.html file you created in Step 1.
10. Click OK ad nauseum, then click Apply.
11. Close IIS Manager and log off of your server.

Test it out by going to http://www.yoursite.com/asdf.

Congratulations! You are the proud owner of a user-friendly 404 page.

Setting Up On Apache

This procedure can depend a little on exactly how your server is configured, but typically you'll want to edit a file called .htaccess. Check with your web hosting provider. If they use Apache they almost certainly have a help document explaining this. If they don’t, contact me and I’ll connect you with a real hosting provider.

1. Connect to your site via FTP. Do you already have a file named .htaccess? If so, skip to step 3
2. Create a new file. Name it .htaccess - use that exact name!
3. Add the following line of text to the file:
   
   ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
   
   This assumes you named your error page 404.html, and that the error page is in the root folder of your web site.
4. Save the file and upload it to your web site, if you have’t already.

Test it out by going to http://www.yoursite.com/asdf.

Done!

Bad 404 Page Setups

Never:

• Redirect 404 errors to your home page. That’s confusing to your visitors. They clicked a link thinking they’d get to one page and you sent them to another with no explanation.
• Redirect 404 errors to another web site. Augh! Why do people even think that’s OK?!
• Send 404 errors to a Flash page. Just don’t.
• Send 404 errors to a page with a registration form that has 25 fields. I’m not making this up...

It Just Isn’t That Hard

Creating a great custom 404 error page is easy.

Having a great custom 404 error page means keeping more visitors on your site, and selling more stuff, getting more leads, etc..

Not having one will just cost you money.

So go do it already!

Listen here

Step 1: All Marketing Starts With Discovery

You start marketing your product or service when someone discovers it and assigns a value to it. I’m not talking about dollar value. I mean the kind of value that says “This won't end up in the attic a week from now”.

Online, discovery happens through search engine results (paid and organic), social media, e-mail marketing, referral and other methods. It works if you know the room through good persona research.

Valuation in internet marketing is a funny thing. In traditional marketing it was all about grabbing the customer's attention, then creatively slapping them silly until, in a stupor, they decided what you had was valuable. Internet marketing flips that. Generally, your customers have already attached a value to what they want. Then they find you and decide whether you can deliver that value.

By the time they’ve found you, they know what they want. Internet customers can be great prospects that way.

So, personas and discoverability-driven marketing (aka Bragging Modestly) will start the ball rolling.

Step 2: Introduction

Now it’s all about how you look. If you dress appropriately, though, the ball keeps rolling.

At this point, you've got a few customers.

Step 3: Identification

This is the marketing sweet spot. Here, your customers don’t see any competitors for you. You are unique, and you have a huge customer base.

You can stretch out the identification phase and stay out of the dreaded commodification morass longer if you provide lots of value, communicate it clearly, keep your customers happy and keep in touch with them.

In other words, you need to sound smart with great copy and contingency design. You also must keep in touch through e-mail, SMS, RSS and any other means at your disposal.

Step 4: Commodification

It happens, no matter what you do. Your competitors flood the market with cheap imitations, or your offering gets stale, or you have a bad month/quarter/year.

At this point you’re competing on price and price alone. You’re providing a commodity in a race to the bottom.

Traditionally, that race ended with a thud. You rolled right off the platform and had to find a new product or service, or at least a new angle on the existing one.

Internet Marketing To The Rescue

Rejoice! If you’ve been talking to customers, using web analytics and generally learning what works and what doesn’t, you can actually observe and adjust: Web analytics mean you can know when commodification starts, long before the ground comes rushing up at you. You can fix problems, improve your message and start the ball rolling back again.

This assumes, of course, that you’re actually selling a decent product, and you’re being honest about it. If you lie or sell junk, no marketing can help. Folks will find out. When they do, they’ll leave.

Online, this cycle can happen in months, days or even hours. The important thing to realize is that it can happen.

The moral? Perform sound, careful, honest internet marketing. And for heaven’s sake, have good web analytics in place from the first day you’re online. Otherwise the first sign things are slipping will be that dull thud when you ‘win’ the race to the bottom.

I won’ go into the details. It’s still too painful. What little stomach lining is left needs some time to recover. Suffice it to say I ignored my Four Rules For Picking A Hosting Company.

Site hosting is critical to an internet marketing campaign. If your servers choke, you get no customers. If your hosting company’s tech support is clueless, you'll lose time (which equals money) and years off your life.

Four Rules For Picking a Hosting Company

1. Phone Number. Does the hosting company have a tech support phone number on their site? If they don’t, don’t use them. I ignored this rule. And spent two hours trying to figure out how I talk to tech support.
2. Site Stability. Does the hosting company’s site work? I ignored my instincts on this one, too. I looked at the hosting company’s site. It ran slow. I signed up anyway. Insanity ensued.
3. Clarity. If your prospective host can’t explain whether they, say, support stored procedures in MYSQL 5, they probably don’t know how to restart a server, either.
4. Cancellation Policy. Find this on their site! If you can’t, call their sales team and ask. One of the hosting companies I fired today actually charged me $50 to cancel my account. Ouch.

Price: You Get What You Pay For

The first two hosting companies charged me $7.95/month for a pretty full-featured hosting package. Seemed too good to be true. I let my guard down, I admit.

The most expensive of the bunch? MediaTemple cost twice what the others did. And they're worth every penny.

I had my site up and running in an hour. One hour. (And no, I'm not getting paid by MediaTemple.)

Follow the Four Rules. You'll stay younger.

I know you're saying "So?" right now. But I have to get my little victories where I can.

My CSS would be compliant, too, except for the stupid hacks we have to make for Internet Explorer. Bill, Bill what are we going to do with you?

So I'm heading back to internet marketing basics. If you're a beginner at all this, or need a refresher, read on.

What are the big vehicles in internet marketing these days? Where can you get traffic? What should you ignore?

Here's my list:

Unpaid (Organic) Search Engine Results

Depending on who you ask, search engines generate anywhere from 60-75% of all traffic online. I'm willing to bet lunch that it's closer to 85%.

Stop 10 random people on the street. Ask them how they start looking for something online. At least 8 will say "a search engine". And at least 7 of those will say "Google".

And most of those will say they ignore all those 'sponsored links' down the right-hand side and across the top.

Go ahead and follow your programmer's search engine optimization advice if you want to. But turning your back on 75% of your audience seems utterly moronic to me.

Blatant plug: Hire a smart SEO. Or at least sign up for SEOMoz, for heaven's sake. Ignore the organic search results and you will never be competitive.

For starters, pay attention to: Title tags, description tags (not for ranking but for clickthru), semantic markup and smart site structure.

Fire anyone who tells you to work with: Keyword tags, link farms or any other pre-1999 SEO tactics.

Paid Search Engine Results (PPC)

I know, I said most folks ignore the sponsored links. But in terms of search engine traffic, the leftovers after 'most' are a hell of a lot of people.

To get into these results, you bid on a keyword or phrase in an auction-style free-for-all. The more you bid, the better your chance of getting a high ranking.

Note I said 'the better your chance'. That's because Google and Yahoo! now use quality scoring algorithms to help determine your paid search ranking. Lousy pages can spend with abandon and still never rank well.

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a great tool, if you know how to use it. If you don't, it'll cost you a fortune.

For starters, pay attention to: Small bids, small keyword lists and tons of testing.

Fire anyone who tells you to work with: Purely automated bid management, bidding 'systems' or anything that sounds like a way to beat the house in Las Vegas.

E-mail (the house list)

E-mail gets a tough rap. Spam, etc. blah blah blah. If you build a house list - an e-mail list that only has signups from your own web site - you'll get the best conversion rate of any vehicle.

Put a signup on your web site. Don't get cute. Slowly grow your list. We see conversion rates of 25% and higher on our clients' house lists. While we're pretty damned good, most of that's because the house lists are solely comprised of folks who want to hear from us.

For starters, pay attention to: Opt-in e-mail signup, good creative, easy unsubscribe and CAN SPAM compliance.

Fire anyone who tells you to work with: Rented lists (they're crap), pre-checking the 'please sign me up' box for e-mail list signup or anything other tactics that, if you were the consumer, would make you want to rip the sender's lungs out.

Social Media

This is the only thing receiving more hype than Barack Obama right now, so it's easy to dismiss it. And there are plenty of half-brained old-school agency types trying to say 'yes, we do that!', so you need to be careful.

But social media - blogs, microblogs, bookmark sites, Flickr and similar - is a great way to launch or grow your brand and your sales/leads/traffic.

Just don't expect it to be easy. Every nitwit (see above) and their cousin is out there spamming every blog and bookmarking service. You need to put your back into it.

For starters, pay attention to: Starting a good conversation with relevant bloggers, connecting with folks via Twitter, contributing your own thoughts via a blog.

Fire anyone who tells you to work with: Comment bots, Digg spam or anything else that makes you feel like you haven't showered in a month.

Display Advertising (banners)

They suck for traffic generation. But they're pretty darned good branding tools.

My advice, though: Skip 'em. If you spend $1,000 on pay per click ads, you'll get more opportunities to strengthen your brand through great service and building customer relationships than if you spend $10,000 on a banner that shows up once every 1,000 pageviews on Martha Stewart's web site.

If you're the Nike of your industry though, by all means, go for it. It will pay off down the road.

Also, buying display ads in a publisher's e-mail can deliver amazing results for just about anyone.

For starters, pay attention to: CPM, good creative and ad delivery rates. Hint: Many major publishers will lie to you and/or underdeliver if you don't keep an eye on them.

Fire anyone who tells you to work with: Display ads instead of PPC. They're drunk, recovering from a head injury, or just plain stupid.

Behavioral Targeting