Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon

11 ways to be a schmuck

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:09:02 -0800

Use Twitter auto-follow tools.
Cut other people down.
Sell products you know are crappy.
Don't take advice. Ever.
WRITE E-MAILS IN ALL CAPS.
Misuse words. Amelioratingly.
Latch onto one idea and don't let go. Two legs good, four legs baaaaad.
Whatever you do, never admit you're wrong.
Whatever you do, never stop reminding others of their mistakes.
Let fear rule your marketing.
Sell to the loophole, not the customer.

The speed factor: Google algorithm change favors small business

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:16:48 -0800

I'm here tonight to clear up a little misconception:

Douglas Karr wrote an article a few days back titled "Is Google really trying to make the web better?"

He talked about Matt Cutts' implication at PubCon that site load speed is becoming a search ranking factor. Karr implies that this favors businesses with deep pockets, I'm assuming because they can spend more on improving load speed.

Mashable picked up the thread, too:

1. Favors big / powerful sites: As Karr notes, big companies are best able to plow resources into technical prowess. This could disrupt Google's egalitarian basis, and the whole idea of the web as a meritocracy.

They got it backwards

If page load time becomes a ranking factor, that favors small business, not big business.

Have you ever seen a large company try to change their web site? Here's how it goes:

IT department is asked to build site based on a content management or ERP system that the accounting department chose.
IT department builds site, testing it carefully on their internal network, and over their ridiculously fast Internet connection.
Site launches.
Site runs like crap, with page load times somewhere around 45-60 seconds (see below if you don't believe me).
Marketing department says "What the hell?!" and asks IT department to speed up the site.
IT department says they'll have to take time away from 10 other projects to change it, and anyway, the competition's site loads just as slow, so who cares?
Marketing department tries to find a way to fix the problem themselves. Finds out there are only 10 people on earth who know how to use the web system they're on, and they all cost $2500 a day. Oddly enough, they all work for the company that makes the system.
Accounting department sees that the marketing department is hiring a consultant. Sends a 3-inch-thick stack of forms to the marketing department to handle the new vendor, who the marketing department is paying a total of $2500.
Marketing manager quits.
New marketing manager comes in, starts the whole thing over again.
IT department manager, sick of managing a web site, quits.
New IT manager comes in swearing to work well with the marketing department.
Accounting department slashes IT budget 40%. New IT manager has to lay off 4 people. Is now totally overtasked.
Marketing manager sees how slow the site loads, says "What the hell?!", and asks the IT department to spee up the site.
Return to number 6 and loop infinitely.

At a small company, here's what happens:

CEO gets site built on Wordpress or static HTML.
Site's not perfect, Lord knows, but it works.
CEO realizes they don't rank for anything, hires an SEO.
SEO says "your site runs too slowly".
CEO yells down the hall to the CTO: "Frank, fix the damned site. It's too slow!"
Frank sets up GZIP compression, or compresses a few images, or hires someone to fix it, or Frank gets fired.
Problem solved.

Quick research

I just checked out a few home pages with Safari's Web Inspector and Google Page Speed:

Target.com: 1.25 megabytes, 15 second average load time
Adidas.com: 1.72 megabytes, 10 seconds average load time
NYTimes: 2 megabytes, 8 seconds average load time

Niiiiiice.

Now, let's look at a few 'smaller' players:

SeeJaneWork.com: .271 megabytes, 4.7 seconds average load time
Velonews.com: .75 megabytes, 6 seconds average load time
usaautoglasswa.com (totally random choice): .135 megabytes, 1.9 seconds average load time

Hmmmm. So who exactly is Google favoring? The small sites, seems to me.

For once.

7 Tips for StumbleUpon Success

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:50:07 -0800

If you want to learn about StumbleUpon and what it is, read my previous article about Stumbleupon traffic quality..

StumbleUpon is my friend. In a weird, they-just-showed-up-and-were-nice-to-me kind of way.

I'll write an article about, say, The Plague that is Powerpoint. Nothing happens. I shrug and move on to the next piece.

Then BAM, weeks later traffic goes ballistic:

Pretty dang cool. I have no idea who started that Stumblefest, but thanks!

No manipulation

First: I am not manipulating StumbleUpon. I don't have 50 accounts so that I can stumble my own stuff. In fact, I no longer stumble my own stuff at all. I got banned once, went through a Kafka-esque ritual to prove my innocence, and am now really conservative.

But there are a few things I do to maximize my Stumble-ability.

Make yourself a Stumble target

Use an image. Always make sure you have an image that will grab a Stumbler's attention:
Make the image catchy. The typical StumbleUpon user just clicks the 'Stumble' button every 10 seconds or so. You need to make them stop clicking long enough to read. That's what the photo is for.
Write a good headline. This one's been beaten to death, but write a cool headline. "Why Powerpoint is bad" probably won't do it. Call Powerpoint a plague, though, and you've got something.
Write something funny/useful. I don't have to explain this, I hope.
Make the page scannable. It has to be easy for someone to zip down the page, take in what they want, and then decide if they like it or not. I broke the Powerpoint post up with lots of images and sub-heads, as well as a few bullets.
Don't write too much. This one pisses me off, but it's true. I write long, detailed posts about canonicalization issues and no one cares. Write a short post with a dead body at the top, though, and you're SET.
Keep blogging. If I stopped writing for a month every time I wrote a dud, I'd write once a month. Keep posting, preferably daily. Take the time. Old content establishes authority. Then one day a piece of new content grabs attention, and folks start going back through your old stuff and suddenly realize, "Hey, maybe this guy can write after all!"

7 Reasons PubCon is a must for next year

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:03:23 -0800

I go to conferences, eat the dry sandwiches, sleep in the hotel room and then head home.

Usually, it's a wash - I learn a thing or two, bounce around outside the circles of the 'in' people like the smallest puppy in the litter, and that's it.

This year, though I went to my first PubCon. And it was fantastic! Here's why:

I didn't attend a single session that was a 50-minute sales pitch. That's a first.
Not one speaker I heard said something that set my teeth on edge: No recommendations like "Optimize your keywords meta tag" or "You'll rank #1 when you get 35 links".
I learned. A lot. I'm not being conceited - my withered, limp ego can't really handle it - but after 15 or so years, I don't expect to learn in every single session I attend. It's enough to hang out with people who're super-smart. This time I was taking notes. Fast. Frantically, even. Maybe I just picked good sessions, dunno.
I met people. People I've known for years but never met in person. People I've harassed via Twitter. For some reason, it was just easier to walk up to Lee Odden and be intercepted by Joanna Lord, or share a table in the speaker's room with Bruce Clay than at other events.
A great panel. I was on a panel with Heather Lloyd-Martin, Elisabeth Osmeloski, Gillian Muessig and Allison Driscoll. That was pretty darned cool, plus the audience asked great questions.
I suck at Search Spam. SEOMOZ had their Search Spam party. I was like the ICBM of good will, trying to spot the black hats and mowing down white hats in the process. I have to redeem myself next year.
I didn't get to meet a host of other people, like Streko and Rhea and such.

So, PubCon gets a definite thumbs-up from me. I'll see you there next year.

Note: Blogworld was undoubtedly awesome, too. But I was too sick to do more than crawl downstairs for my speaking gig. So don't make any assumptions about the conference's value.

Using eBay as a keyword research tool

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:24:45 -0800

Quick post tonight:

I've been using eBay's keyword research tool for a while now. It may just beat the more established toolsets when it comes to commercial keyword research.

Here's how you use it:

First, go to http://labs.ebay.com/raghavgupta/demoto/to?.

Type in your query:

When you click 'submit' you'll get a report like this:

The 'Popularity' column shows searches performed by eBay users. You can't define the time frame - eBay does that for you.

The 'Availability' column shows the number of items returned, on average, when you search on eBay.

And the 'Bay Estimate' column shows how many folks have successfully sold stuff. The bigger the green circle, the more searchers bought, and the higher the commercial intent of the searchers.

You can then click on each word to drill deeper into the data.

Some big gotchas

A few major gotchas with the eBay Labs BayEstimator:

The data is up to eighteen months old. If you have a new product, you can't rely on it. If this was current data, I'd burn my copy of The Web Marketing for Dummies All In One Desk Reference and quit writing out of embarrassment.
The Estimator picks and changes the date range each time you do a search. So you can't do any trending.
It's an experimental tool. So sometimes, it just don't work at all.

A good starting point

Still, it's a great starting point for popular products. The eBay keyword tool gets you a quick idea of whether a product phrase is viable or not, and if so, the overall commercial intent of searchers.

If you want to dig even deeper, check out the eBaysaurus tool. With that, you can find potentially related queries and get basic interest data:

Regardless, don't ignore eBay. It's a data gold mine if you sell stuff on the web.

Things to do

Learn analytics-driven SEO.
Learn your keyword research tools.
Follow me on Twitter.
Subscribe to this blog.
Learn to be like CSI.
Be sure to memorize your 14 social media lessons.

Analytics-Driven SEO: A lesson in 4 steps

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:38:06 -0800

I'm speaking at Pubcon tomorrow in the Real-World Content Creation Tactics session. I'm going to focus on how you avoid destroying copy with SEO, and how to do great analytics-centric SEO. If you know me, you know I rehearse, in part, by writing. So here you go - a preview of tomorrow's talk.

"Write good content, and they will come."

Humbug.

You'd better have more of a strategy than that. Ian's Cynical Version of the same rule is:

"Write the right good content, and they'll eventually show up."

It's that critical word - right - that can make or break your Internet marketing efforts. So here's a formula I've used for years to make sure I'm writing what my audience actually wants to read:

Step 1: Figure out what's got their attention

What's bringing people to your site, and where do they go when they get there? You can figure it out with analytics.

If you don't have traffic reports of any kind, bookmark this article. Then go kick your webmaster's arse, get traffic reporting set up, and come back in about 4 weeks.

Open your traffic reporting tool. I'm going to use Google Analytics in this example. Pick a date range that will get you a decent chunk of page traffic. Use your gut here - there's no set ideal number.
Go to the Top Content Report. This report lists the most popular pages on your site (it might be called 'Top Pages' or 'Most viewed pages'). To find this report in Google Analytics, click 'Content >> Top Content'.
Click the most popular page (besides your home page).
Then list the keywords driving traffic to this page. In Google Analytics, you do that by selecting 'Entrance Keywords' from the 'Analyze' drop down:
Take a look at the time on site and exit rate for those keywords. If they're average or close to average, then they're probably a good starting point.

You can get a lot fancier with conversions and such, but I'm sticking with the simplest version of this procedure for now.

Step 2: Find your juiciest keywords

Now you have a nice, neat list of keywords that drive traffic to the busiest page on your site:

Copy the top 5-10 terms into a tool like the Google Adwords External Keywords Tool. You can delete any terms that are clearly branded. In this case, I removed '22 things you don't know about your customers', because that's the article title. I don't need to optimize for that.

In my case, the best phrase generating traffic is 'marketing strategies'. If I have a prayer of ranking for it, I need to pursue it:

Now I know: My post is getting traffic from 'marketing strategies'. It's decent quality traffic. I want more.

Step 3: Figure out if you have a chance

Can I compete for a top ranking for 'marketing strategies'? A quick look at the Google rankings tells me I can dream: My home page is actually high on page 2 for the phrase. Click here to see the rankings.

The specific post doesn't show up in the first five pages. But what the hell. I'm an optimist. Cough. I'll take a shot at it.

Step 4: Optimize!

Armed with this knowledge, I'm going to do a few things:

Change the title tag to start with 'Internet Marketing Strategy', so I'm a tad more relevant;
Tweak the first paragraph's copy a little so that it has the keyphrase in it;
Build links to the post from other pages on my blog;
Potentially write more marketing strategy posts and link them to this page, too.

Voila. Analytics-driven SEO.

Analytics-driven means customer-centric

This method is never perfect, of course. Once you make your changes, keep a close eye on how traffic patterns change. I also encourage you to learn more keyword research tools, so you can more thoroughly check on the phrases you select.

The real beauty of this strategy: You're just doing what your customers tell you to do. Worst case, it should improve the page's 'curb appeal' when visitors arrive.

12 SEO things I want

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:36:08 -0800

Access to real, accurate, useful, transparent query data.
For all snake oil sellers to shag off.
For all people who say all SEO is snake oil to shag off.
A Google webmaster tools API that actually lets me read data.
A real competitor to Google. Not that I don't like Google, but c'mon.
PageRank forever erased from the Google Toolbar.
The phrase 'link exchange' forever erased from our collective intellect.
A mandatory kidney punch for anyone who says SEO is about optimizing your meta tags. OK, maybe just a sneer. I'm not a violent man.
A year to complete all the cool tools I've dreamed up, but can never build because of time constraints. Just a year? Pretty please?
An end to brand favoritism.
Linking guidelines that don't resemble the legal system in a Franz Kafka novel. I know everyone's just doing their best, I really do. But still...
A look 10 years into the future. We've come from nothing, essentially, to what we have now in 10 years. Can you imagine what 2019 will be like? I can't wait.

Want to be a great internet marketer? Be like CSI.

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:21:41 -0800

I'm sitting here watching CSI (ironic, since I'm going to Las Vegas tomorrow for Pubcon).

What makes this show so damned compelling? The sneak peek plus a dose of authenticity.

The sneak peek builds the connection

You have a job, a career, or a business. You love it, but you do the same stuff every day. It seems routine - why would anyone want to know about it?

Because they don't do your same stuff every day. They do their same stuff every day.

The writers of CSI treat us like they want us to understand. We appreciate that. A connection forms.

You have to show your audience a bit of what you do. Even if they don't fully understand it, they'll feel you're treating them to something (and you are). They feel like you're giving them a personal tour of your factory, or taking them through your office.

You want them to understand what you do. They appreciate it, and a connection forms. Voila.

It doesn't work without authenticity

But you have to really want them to understand. That's authenticity. Folks can smell a fake a mile away.

Lots of shows try to imitate CSI. Very few succeed. Is it just because CSI is the original? Maybe a little. But the real key is that CSI feels authentic. The characters are flawed and quirky. They're real. They don't look like actors shoved into a script. I don't know enough about screenwriting to know why - I just know it.

It's not enough to just show your consumers how you make their product. They need to see the gleam in your eye, too: The look that says "Wow, Ian's a little loopy, but he really wants to tell me about this. He really loves what he does".

That's authenticity.

Put it together, man!

Try an experiment: The next time you're selling, blogging or Tweeting, talk about the part of your job you really love. Give them the authentic sneak peek.

See how the audience responds. I'll bet you close the deal.

Case closed.

I got snake oil in my black hat (Guest Post)

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:21:27 -0800

This guest post is from Sarah Edwards, a writer and SEO at the Creare Group. You have to check out their SEO Song. It's like marketing combined with American Bandstand.

With so many search engine optimisation companies around, it can be difficult to know which ones are protecting your best interests. It's important to know the difference between two kinds of SEOs: So called 'black hat' experts, and the scammers.

First, there are the black hats.

Black Hat SEO is loosely defined as using search optimisation techniques that exploit weaknesses in search engine algorithms and go against search and webmaster guidelines (such as those provided by Google). This tends to involve excessive link building, often through spamming forums and blogs and cloaking. These tactics are risky.

But they do work. And they don't violate any laws.

If you decide to engage in black hat tactics, just make sure you're aware of the trade off: Black hat SEO work, but they're a short term tactic. Once a search engine figures out you're engaging in black hat tactics, your site will be banned. Short term gain. Long-term losses. Any black hat SEO will tell you the exact same thing.

At a minimum: If you're a reputable business, never, ever practice black hat SEO on your primary site.

Then there are the out-and-out con artists.

Many businesses have been scammed out of thousands by such companies, who tend to promise that they can achieve exceptionally high rankings in no time at all. This is just not possible - at least not without incurring a significant cost, but some such companies can be very convincing.

So to avoid the SEOs that are effectively just con artists, it is crucial to carry out some research. Just as you wouldn't buy a car without a test run, don't invest in SEO or websites unless you have a clear idea of exactly what services you are being provided with. If that is black hat and you are fully aware of the risks, so be it, but do make sure you don't let shoddy SEOs run away with your money - and your site's credibility.

14 social media lessons we can all learn

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:27:14 -0800

Yep, my least favorite marketing term finally gets its own list. Aside from my occasional outpouring of hatred.

Truth is, though, whatever you want to call it, social media is teaching us how marketing should work, and how it's always worked. Here's a list of my thoughts on the subject:

1. It's just media.

Listen to Gary Vaynerchuck. And Steve Rubel. And to me. The secret is that it's just media.

What we call 'social media' is a fantastic evolution of media. It's media distilled down to a bazillion conversations, all going on, all at once. Sounds chaotic? That's because it is.

Todo: Read about the Federalist Papers. Learn about Martin Luther. Research smoke signals. Heck, read Snow Crash and learn about the Nam Shubs of Enki. All social media. We 21st Century folk not as clever as we think.

2. If you want to talk, first learn to listen.

That evolution (see #1) means everyone can see through you.

Leap into a conversation on, say, Twitter, without understanding the history. Type message. Insert foot, 140 characters at a time. Your audience will figure out you're full of crap in a big hurry.

So learn to listen, first.

Todo: Learn to use Google Reader or another monitoring tool. Sign up for Twitter and track a few cool lists.

3. If you want to talk, learn the language.

Social media conversations whiz by. ZZzzzzip. See? There goes one now.

Be brief and to the point. Don't use 10 words if 2 will do.

Todo: Learn to be brief.

4. Answer questions. Contribute.

When you do talk, answer questions. Help out.

Think of each social media conversation as a construction project: It's built one Tweet, blog post or smoke signal at a time. If whatever you're about to write won't help build that conversation, think twice before you click 'send' or 'publish' or whatever.

Even silly conversations are construction projects. Ever been in a public place with 2 friends, joking around and laughing hysterically about the course a conversation just took? What happens when a stranger walks up and says "Yeah!" or something equally brilliant? End of conversation.

Social media's no different. Actually, that conversation was social media. And some nubwit just tore down your structure. Sheesh.

Todo: Every day, find 3 people looking for answers on Twitter, Facebook or wherever you hang out. Either give them a useful answer yourself, or refer them to someone you think might help. Contribute!

5. Start conversations that matter (as much as possible)

Maybe you're cursing about the NY Giants (like me) or chatting about NASA's latest Ares rocket launch. Either way, make sure your conversation matters.

'Matters' means 'someone else will care'.

We've got enough folks talking about their breakfast. Nuthin' wrong with that, I guess. Just try to mix in some real stuff, OK?

Todo: Start at least one conversation that gets a response from other people.

6. Don't look for instant dollars.

Whenever someone dismisses social media with a statement like "I just don't see the payoff", I want to scream.

No, I don't believe in the economy of free. But there's more to business, and life, than dollars.

And you can't expect a quick payoff, either.

For business, social media is like a networking event that never stops. Start conversations that matter, contribute, and you gain trust, acceptance and reputation. That's when the payoff begins.

If you're a consultant, leads start trickling in. If you're a retailer, folks start showing up saying they heard about you online. If you run a food truck, guess what? You'll have folks lining up around the corner.

Todo: Put a blank piece of paper on your desk. Every time you get a 'thank you' from a social media conversation, put a check mark. Give yourself a Kit Kat for each check. See how many check marks you need before you get something tangible. I'll bet it's around 100...

7. No takebacks.

Once you click 'submit' or 'send' or 'publish', it's out there for everyone to see. If you said something hurtful/stupid/embarrassing you can delete it later, sure.

But chances are, 10 people forwarded your note along, or republished it. Or a search engine found your gaffe and cached it forever more.

There are no takebacks in social media. Use a racial slur in front of a kid with a video camera, and bam, you're on YouTube forever.

Luckily, you can pause before forever entering the Halls of Stupidity.

Todo: Get a timer. When you're even a little nervous about what you wrote, set the timer to 15 minutes. Don't publish until the timer goes 'ding'. Still feel OK with it?...

8. Set a routine.

Leave Twitter running all day and it'll take over your life. Trust me. Instead, set a routine. Set a goal for your involvement: Once a day. Twice a day. Whatever's easy.

Todo: Go into your calendar and schedule time every X hours or X days or X minutes to go listen and respond. Stick to it. Don't do it more or less than you scheduled. Try that for at least a week. Then dial your time up or down as needed.

9. Don't take yourself so seriously.

You. Aren't. That. Important. Sorry, it's just true. I'm not either. If there are 5 million people online right now, chances are one of them knows more than you about your conversation of the moment.

Don't take yourself too seriously. This isn't a courtroom. It's a bunch of people standing around with drinks in their hand, chatting about everything from sports to lingerie to world peace.

Todo: Read your last 3 days' Tweets. Make fun of at least one of them, in public.

10. Assemble a toolset.

Make social media outlets your beeyatch. Learn to use Tweetdeck or Seesmic and you can post to Facebook, Twitter and other outlets from one location. Learn to use Google Reader or another good feed reader and you can track lots of conversations from one place, without burning out your frontal lobe.

Always find ways to make participation easier.

Todo: Download and install Tweetdeck or Seesmic. Learn to use at least one of them, on at least 2 different social networks.

11. Start using photos.

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.

Learn to use Flickr, Twitpic and Facebook photo albums. Well, learn one of 'em, at least.

And learn to use your cell phone camera, will ya?

Todo: Go for a walk. See something cool. Snap a quick photo and upload it to the network of your choice.

12. Spread the love.

Social networks live on connections. If someone you know writes something cool, or is just generally an all around good guy, let other folks know.

Todo: Learn what Follow Friday is.

13. Find new friends

In any social environment, it's easy to get comfortable and stick with who you know. But you need to branch out.

Every new person you meet is a potential guide to a whole new community or mini-audience.

Todo: Follow/reply to/friend at least one truly relevant, interesting person each day.

DO NOT use automatic friend/follow software. The stupidity police will find you and carry you away in their whisper choppers to their secret base far below the Earth's surface. You'll never be seen again.

14. That's all, folks

Where do you go from here? It's up to you. Everyone converses in their own way. All I'm saying is get out there and join the conversation. Learn your style, find your friends and the rest will fall into place.

8 marketing messages we all know are lies

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:25:27 -0800

After a few years in marketing, it's hard to say any of these without blushing. The louder we say it, the more you can depend on the fact that we're lying:

We care about your business. Typically said as the customer service department shoves something splintery into whatever orifice you forgot to seal shut.
Made with you in mind. Only if 'you' means '30 people locked in a room behind one-way glass, fed caffeine and sugar and then egged on by a facilitator until they were all ready to kill each other'.
We will beat any price. Except prices in catalogs, prices from the store down the street, and any prices located while Mercury is in retrograde.
We know you have other choices, and we appreciate your business. I heard this from airlines that feed me nuts and charge me for water, knowing full well the other airlines are preparing to charge extra for 'in-flight conscious-level air supply'.
We are certified experts! By the Elbonian University of Internet Marketing!
Wholesome goodness. Written on foods comprised of mile-long molecules and unpronounceable ingredients.
Helps your child's development. Oh, really? To be fair, did anyone really believe leaving their kid to watch dancing puppets on the boob tube for 30 minutes would make their little bundle of joy smarter? I just thought they kept my overly precocious children entertained so I could curl up in a ball for 30 seconds.
Retains value. Usually used in reference to cars. Means it only loses 75% of its value the moment you drive off the lot.

I was aiming for 10 but my kids are rebelling against bed time and my wife sounds like she may put them up for sale on eBay.

Is all marketing bad? No. But good marketing doesn't lie, or even bend the truth. Got that?

RFPs Suck - Don't take my word for it...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:12:12 -0800

RFPs are like a colonoscopy: Someone you don't even know gets to inspect you from the inside out.

Sorry, I prefer to have dinner first.

Thankfully, I'm no longer raving alone. Tom Searcy has written an excellent book titled, guess what, RFPs Suck! How to Master the RFP System Once and for All to Win Big Business.

Unlike me, he provides excellent help to navigate the RFP process. In fact, I used some of his advice in an RFP, and are now in the running for the contract. So his stuff works.

Tom was kind enough to do an interview with me about the book and RFPs in general. Here it is:

1. What inspired you to write the book? I know why I'd write it - because RFPs really do suck. But clearly you've seen great success responding to RFP's.

Over the past five years, governance requirements, aggressive cost-cutting measures and more powerful purchasing departments have been driving deals into the RFP process--even the smaller deals that may not have required one before. As such, the number of deals that require an RFP process has increased exponentially.

I wrote RFPs Suck! to address this new "norm." I wanted to give people a better answer than "If you didn't write the RFP, then don't answer it," so that they could best harness their strengths and weaknesses when answering an RFP. In the current environment of compliance and documentation paranoia, you have to be able to answer RFPs and answer them well, especially if you want to play in six-figure and up deal arena. Just as important, RFPs Suck! is a lesson in knowing which RFPs to skip so that you can save your money, time and talent for the RFPs you actually have a shot at winning.

2. Everyone - even the companies that write them - seems to understand that RFP's suck. Why do they keep using them?

I truly believe that everyone has become a victim in the RFP process: the people making the buying decision don't want to be forced into an RFP process; the Procurement/Purchasing departments don't want to process the responses; and nobody on the responding side wants the hassle, uncertainty and unnecessary work. So why is everyone using them? Three major reasons:

Corporate governance requires it. Between Sarbanes-Oxley, boards of directors' paranoia and the legal advice of compliance specialists, companies are using the RFP process to stay safe.

Ruthless cost-cutting. RFPs allow buyers to force vendors and suppliers into lowering prices in order to win an RFP. As each company aims lower and lower, the buyers come to believe that they've made a good decision to ask for the RFP process and that they are cutting costs. But while buyers may have lowered prices, it doesn't mean they have lowered their true costs.

Free consulting. RFPs allow a company to get a full market scan of the current technology, best practices, new materials and other types of information that used to only be available at trade shows and conferences. RFPs can free buyers from doing their own market research.

The bottom line: RFPs are becoming the favored way to evaluate enterprise purchases and significant new vendor relationships, so we've got to get used to them.

3. In the book, you talk a lot about large organizations and their resistance to change. You say a big part of success in the RFP process revolves around reassuring the potential client that they won't have to change too much. But in Internet marketing, we have to push for change: In the IT department; in their copywriting approach; to their web workflow; even to how they handle messaging and social media. How can true Internet marketing agencies balance time, money and risk?

Your RFP answer, at its core, should do one thing: help your prospect overcome their fears of buying from you. The RFP process is not designed to help companies make a good decision. It is designed to help them avoid making a bad decision. For this reason, your answer should focus on the things which make them most afraid. Typical driving fears include change, more work and the possibility of making mistakes. The prospect will buy from the seller that provides the safest choice.

When companies are involved in the RFP process, we encourage them to clearly show a prospect the operational, customer relationship and technology components that won't change when they buy. This doesn't mean that there won't be any change or that the changes won't be significant. It just means that prospects can take comfort in the stability of many of the other areas of their business. When you are going through an internet marketing change you still must demonstrate a respect for the customers, an ability to integrate with the supply chain management processes that are in place and of course, the intrinsic perception of the brand. These should all be emphasized as a part of the RFP response to balance out the big changes you will advocate.

4. What's strongest sign that an RFP is a dead end?

In RFPs Suck!, I cover a dozen red flags that indicate a problematic RFP. Here are a few of the really big ones:

No access. If you receive an RFP from a company that you do not know very well and they will not give you any access to the end buyers, head for the hills. This is the kiss of death.

Answer specifications are too tight/restrictive. I see RFP questions that say; "Please explain your approach to managing the full supply chain. Limit your answer to 100 words." This is a market price scan, not a real RFP, and it shouldn't be answered.

Too deep a dive. If you are being asked as a part of an early RFP for prototypes, design documents and material samples, it's highly likely that you are involved in a "free-consulting" exercise and not an actual RFP.

Too many participants. Why would you participate in an RFP process when the company sending it out can't limit its list to less than 5-7 companies? This is a market survey from an unsophisticated buyer.

There are plenty more red flags, but the driver in many of these is that you can tell up front whether you have an "odds-in-your-favor" opportunity. If you don't, don't play.

5. Without harming innocents: What's the worst RFP you've ever seen?

You might think that the worst RFPs come from the government or military, but those are actually not too bad. They are usually long and tedious, but not awful. I have found that the most poorly written RFPs have been in the systems integration space. They are usually written by people who do not know what they want and who put the onus of figuring out what the RFP is asking for on the respondents.

6. Didn't you write an e-book a while back? (this is your chance to plug another product)

I wrote the e-book "Landing Big Sales with an RFP" late last year. The response was so overwhelming and positive that I decided to expand upon the topic, hence RFPs Suck! I also published Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company with Barbara Weaver Smith in 2008 through Wiley.

7. If you had to give 3 tips to someone before they responded to the most important RFP of their lives, what would they be? No pressure...

First, pick the two to three overwhelmingly favorable advantages about your solution and work them into all of the questions that you can. RFP reader-teams rarely have each member read all of the segments and typically break up the RFP into sections. If you have a phenomenal advantage but only write it into one segment, you may miss persuading the most important person on that reading team.

Second, write at a high school sophomore level. Many people on the RFP reading team only have a secondary knowledge about your business and the RFP they are reviewing, so if you included too much jargon and TLAs (three letter acronyms), you will lose your readers in translation. This will make them feel very fearful and less likely to choose your team.

Third, don't assume anything. Your readers are fearful people who are trying to make a safe decision. They don't know anything about you (or at least that is the safest assumption). Whenever you can, demonstrate your stability, your safety and your consistency in the marketplace to make the convincing argument that your company is the safe and supportable decision.

One smart guy

Tom Searcy is one smart guy, folks. If you want to get access to big contracts and clients, you must read this book. You can also read his web site and blog, HuntingBigSales.com.

Sound Transit Web Site Review: They get an F-

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:02:58 -0800

Sound Transit is soliciting comments and ideas to improve their web site.

I've long seen this site as a blight upon all public transit, so I did a special edition video review. Note that I am having a crappy week, and it's only Monday, so any harshness is totally 100% authentic:

For God's sake, guys, at least put a map on your home page.

13 Internet marketing tips for Realtors

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:39:16 -0800

Yo, realtors: You guys rock. You help people make the biggest purchase of their lives.

But you don't understand marketing. Or at least it seems that way. Here are a few tips:

Don't send me canned e-mails with the same content that every other realtor is sending me. It does nothing for me, or you.
Do send me a short note telling me about changes in the neighborhood, or big changes you think are coming to my block, or your new puppy. Pick something I care about!
Build your own site. Your agency page is nice and all, but it looks like every other agent's agency page. Don't have the time/money to build a custom site? Use Blogger.com or Wordpress.com.
Pick a really small niche. Own it. Love gardening? Write about it. Send me gardening tips. Write about it on your blog. Remember: You love gardening. Share it. You'll get more fans that way than spamming me with lists of local house values.
Get writing. I tell everyone else this. Why not you too? Write on your blog. Draft your next 3 newsletters. Whatever. Writing is a full-contact sport: The more you write, the better shape you'll be in.
Guest post. Find a blog you like and admire. Offer to provide a guest post. You give someone content, they give you a link.
Learn how local search works. Read everything on David Mihm's blog. You may not rank #1 for 'Manhattan Realtor', but you have a legitimate shot at 'Hudson Heights realtor'.
Be available. We're past the days of the direct, hard sell. Build a strong presence online. That doesn't mean you always have to be present. It means that your identity - your brand - has to be. So make sure you've got a Facebook page, and a Twitter account, and a Yelp account.
Respond. If someone e-mails you asking if you know a good dog walker, answer them! I know it's a pain. But you never know where your next client might come from. Maybe it's that person. Or maybe it's the dog walker you refer to them.
Be a referral resource. Connect people who need help to the people who can help them. Become the Person To Ask. Build some social currency. You can cash it in later.
Do reviews. Use Google Maps, Yelp and other local sites to review local restaurants, hair stylists and other shops you frequent. Become the neighborhood expert.
Find the local blogs. Read them. Someone in your area is probably writing a fantastic local news blog. Find it. Subscribe to it. Keep up on events.
Go to a Q & A site like Yahoo! Answers. Look for folks asking about your neighborhood. Answer them. That's your next step towards becoming that neighborhood expert.

Work towards this stuff, and you'll become the person people contact when they want great information about the area. What could better position you as a realtor?

Free web site review contest: The winners

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:06:03 -0800

The submissions are in, the judges (well, judge) has decided. The winners of a free 10Things web site review are:

Cherryloop.com, because they bought a copy of my book.
LaurelCrown.com, because Laurence's post made me laugh.
Alex Hardy, even though he spells 'favorite' funny.

I'll contact each of you no later than Tuesday to set up a time for your review.

Everyone submitted cool stuff - thank you all for participating. I'll be sending everyone else a little something via e-mail in the next few days.

Thanks again - this was fun, which means I might do it again, or just check too see if I'm overdosing on my medication again...

Internet Marketing is like HiDef TV

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:15:41 -0800

This weekend, my wife and I bought a flat-screen, LCD TV set. Hard to believe, but Ian Lurie, ubergeek, has never owned a TV larger than 36", and hasn't bought a TV since 2002.

We got it home, did all the hookup stuff. Turned on the TV. And our jaws dropped.

It is impossible to describe what hi-definition TV looks like. I've had people tell me. I've even seen it in stores. But until it's sitting in your house, and you can pick out every hair on House's stubbly face, you don't understand.

Someone gave me all the data about 1080p and 120hz and LED backlighting. That didn't hurt. But I still didn't get it.

Most of the folks I talk to about Internet marketing don't get it, either. That's not a slap at them. It's just a fact of life in a complex, sometimes arcane business.

I spend at least 75% of my working day persuading.

Persuading the developers to make a change for the sake of SEO.

Persuading a CEO to invest in content.

Persuading a potential client that yes, it is worth an extra 20% to just. have. everything. right. when your new site launches.

In short, persuading clients and prospects that a quality Internet marketing campaign, where everything just falls into place, will blow everything else they've ever seen clean out of the water.

You get the picture.

Actually, you don't.

You can't.

Because Internet marketing really is like hidef TV. Until you've seen it in action in your own business, on your own site, it's impossible to understand.

That's not the client's fault, or the prospect's problem. It's my problem. If you're an SEO, or a marketer, or a designer, it's your problem, too.

Somehow, we have to find a way to show our clients what hidef TV is like, without putting it in their living room. I'll keep working on that.

OK, enough navel-gazing for today...

Some posts you may actually want to read

Action + perception = identity: Branding in Social Media

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:22:20 -0800

I'm on a panel in about 2 hours at REBlogworld. The panel I'm on will discuss the relationship between branding and social media. So I've been thinking a lot about the intersection of brands and social media.

Here's the thing: Your brand is not your logo.

Your brand has always been:

Action. The actions you take: How you treat customers. What products you make or carry. What you did that one time something went wrong.
Perception. How your audience perceives those actions.

Action is still the same

Social media hasn't changed the influence your actions can have on your brand.

Piss someone off, they'll still hate you just as much.

Make someone happy, and they'll still love you just as much.

Want to build a great brand in social media (or anywhere else, for that matter)? Don't be a jerk.

Perception spreads faster

The change to your brand: The speed of perception.

Perception of your actions can spread fast. Really fast. Like speed of lint fast.

So, when you piss someone off, they can tell 20,000,000 of their closest friends about it within minutes. Same thing if you make them happy.

What to do?

First, don't change your behavior. Unless you're a jerk.

Second, be sure you talk to people. Lots of people. Online and off. Every 'touch' with a particular person makes it more likely they'll remember you when someone else writes "Hey, Florence just helped me out, big time". If they recognize your name, they'll probably pass the message along using a retweet (on Twitter), a comment (on Facebook) or whatever other vehicles exist.

Third, monitor the conversation. Learn to use Google Reader as a monitoring tool. Check in now and then. Hear a relevant question? Jump right in and help out.

Fourth, don't try too hard. I don't want your inspirational quote in my Twitter stream 10x a day. I don't need to hear where you're at right this moment. I definitely don't want a hard sell. I just want the same helpful stuff you've always provided. And I totally appreciate your help when I have a question.

The speed of perception

Social media has accelerated the rate at which public perception of your actions (your brand) can spread. It hasn't changed branding. Listen, learn, and do right by folks when they need your help. A great brand will follow.

I'll try to talk more about this when I'm no longer taking double doses of Dayquil...

Watch me hide behind a concrete post: My Wordcamp Seattle Presentation

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:46:00 -0800

The nice folks at Wordcamp.tv recorded my presentation at WordCamp Seattle 2009. You can watch it right here:

Or in larger size here. Note how I skillfully conceal myself behind a concrete post at least 3 times in the presentation. I thought that was pretty damned clever.

PS: I'm in Las Vegas for Blogworld until Friday, so blog posts may be few and far between. Ironic, huh?

3 Feedburner Engagement Stats You Must Follow

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:52:48 -0800

This post assumes you're a Feedburner user. If you're not, here's the short version: Feedburner gives you a bunch of free tools to enhance your site's RSS feed. You can read more and get set up (for free) here.

Everyone brags about their Feedburner subscriber numbers. Too bad those don't really tell you squat. The subscriber count tells you how many folks once stopped by and clicked the 'subscribe' button.

I'm on a panel titled "Branding in the Social Age" at REBlogworld this week, so I've been thinking about this more than usual. Subscriber data is fun - I feel validated when I add a few new subscribers. But subscribers are really the hits of feed tracking: All noise, no substance.

After all, how many of those subscribers actually read your stuff?

What you really need are engagement metrics. You need data that measures how your subscribers react to your blog posts. Luckily, Feedburner provides 'em. Here are 3 that I use:

Reach

Reach shows how many people have viewed and/or clicked an article in your feed. It can also show folks who see your articles via a feed aggregator like Technorati.

If subscriber count measures quantity, then reach measures quality. The higher your reach, the better job you're doing communicating and connecting with your audience.

Item use

Item Use shows you, on a post-by-post basis, how many people viewed and clicked through on every article. Nifty.

With this stat, you can tell which blog posts compelled your readers to click through, and which ones didn't.

If you're producing a podcast, Feedburner will show how many people downloaded each episode, too.

If you're providing your full post via your feed, expect to see fewer clicks. Readers can see the entire post in their feed reader without clicking.

If you're just providing post summaries in your feed, you should see more clicks. Readers have to click to see the whole post.

Uncommon Uses

Finally, if you really want to geek out, check out the Uncommon Uses report.

This report shows you things like:

Someone's custom feed reader script they wrote, just to add your content to their site;
Custom pages on bigger sites, like the my.alltop.com examples above;
Weird little Twitter tools like Powertwitter that read your site and then 'Tweet' new stories to followers.

Useful? I think so. If people are taking the trouble to somehow syndicate your content, that's another level of engagement. They're spreading your brand to new corners of the web.

And, if you see a sudden spike in uncommon uses after you publish a story about a scone that looks like Elvis, you might want to find more person-shaped scones.

Select, don't accumulate

A long time ago, I wrote how you should select, not accumulate customers.

The same goes for subscribers. Using Feedburner, you can figure out how many true fans you've got, and make sure you give them more of the stuff that made them fans in the first place.

That's the key to social media branding.

SEO, Title Tags and Rankings: CM Site Review #5

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:18:10 -0800

This week's site review is OneTakeMedia.net. Solid site but it has the potential to grab a top 10 ranking for their best phrase with a few tweaks.

And yes, that's my head talking in the video. Let me know if it's eerily horrifying, helpful or not worth the effort of actually combing my hair:

Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing reviews OneTakeMedia.net for SEO-readiness, and makes some suggestions about canonicalization, as well as title tags.

Dork detection: 10 questions for 'professional' developers

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:09:27 -0800

I don't have anything against developers. What drives me up a wall are people who think they're developers because they can drag and drop controls in Visual Studio or Dreamweaver.

If you're not a geek yourself, though, it's hard to figure out who's full of knowledge and who's full of crap. So here you go - my 10-question evaluation:

How do you write your code? If the answer is "I don't write it. Visual Studio/Dreamweaver/whatever writes it for me", give them a copy of Textmate or similar and ask them to come back in 5 years.
How do you secure your code? "I have a password on my laptop" is bad. "I filter out illegal characters" or "Here's how SQL injection works..." are good.
What languages do you program? "HTML" = FAIL. HTML is all well and good but it's not what you need to develop web applications. "COBOL" might be cause for alarm, too.
What databases do you use? "MS Access" is like screaming "I am an amateur". "MYSQL", "SQL Server" and/or "Oracle" are all fine.
How do you improve site performance? "Add more servers" is a BAD ANSWER. "Find bottlenecks", "Reduce database calls", "Use caching", "GZIP" and a variety of others are just great.
What frameworks do you use? If they answer "frameworks?" or hesitate more than 10 seconds, forget it. If they look at you like an insect and say "frameworks are for wimps", that's probably OK. If they rattle off a bunch of weird sounding things like Cake, Rails, Grails or who-knows-what-else, that's OK, too.
What's your experience? If the answer is "I have a computer science degree" KICK THEM THE HELL OUT. With the pace of technological change these days, by the time they had their degree in their sweaty little hands, it was worthless. Any self-respecting geek would've written some bit of code during their college years, or since then.
How do you learn new programming languages and such? "I take a class" is bad. If they answer "I research it online, play around with it and try some stuff.", hug them.
How do you work with non-developers, like designers? "I think they have a lot to offer" is code for "I will ignore them like the pests that they are". "I try to provide some input during design" or "I need their help if there's something in their design that I can't implement" are both great.
What was the worst project you ever worked on? If the answer is a long litany of complaints about everyone on the team but her, this person will be a disaster. If they take even a smidgen of blame or responsibility, you can probably make it work.

Bonus: Ask them how they make an HTML title tag dynamic. If they can't figure it out, they are incompetent.

By the way, all of the 'bad' answers are from real-world interviews.

Pseudo-developers, heed my words: We will find you. You cannot hide.

Yep, Twitter is Down

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:10:28 -0800

It's not just you - as reported by The Guardian and a bunch of other publications, Twitter is having some kind of bizarre problem. Again.

If I had $100 million in investment dollars, my web site would never ever go down. I'd put servers in orbit, for God's sake. I'd pay someone $40k/year to stare at a traffic monitor and switch on an extra server farm that's in a concrete bunker, just-in-case.

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to punch overly smug owners of meteoric startups in the face.

I'm just sayin'.

Get a $500 Website Review, Free

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:44:57 -0800

Update: Submissions are now closed. I'll be announcing the winners on October 21st (or 22nd). Thanks everyone who submitted. I am, by the way, still accepting bribes.

Something's wrong with your web site. Let me restate that: Something's wrong with your web site. There's always room to improve your search rankings, copy, design, usability or marketing campaign.

You can get advice from your cousin's brother's sister's friend who once worked at a company where she got to build the corporate site using Microsoft Word.

Or, you can talk to an expert. But experts cost money, and you don't have a lot of money these days (hell, who does?), so you go the Microsoft Word route. But when you're done, you feel like you spent hours on a treadmill: You're sweaty, but you didn't get anywhere.

Well, here's your shot at a bit of free consulting, 1-on-1 via phone, with an expert: Me!

According to Malcom Gladwell in Outliers, 10,000 hours in a given subject is a critical step to expert status. I ran the numbers, and I've put in close to 30,000 hours into my Internet marketing career. That proves two things: I have no hobbies; and I have a smidge of expertise as an Internet marketer. Don't you think?

The deal

I've launched a new Internet marketing consulting service called 10Things.

For $500 I:

Review your site;
Write a report listing 10 things I feel will improve the site's SEO performance, sales/lead generation or anything else that can improve your Internet marketing campaign;
and then spend an hour on the phone with you reviewing my findings.

To kick off the service, I'm offering 3 of these consults for free. Here's how you can win one:

Write 1 paragraph about why I should review your site. Hilarity is welcome. Embarrassing photos are not.
Post that paragraph on your own site or blog or leave it as a comment, below.
If you post it to your own web site or blog, be sure to e-mail me at ian AT portent DOT com.
Wait patiently.

I'll pick the winners next week. If you win, I'll review your site and spend an hour on the phone with you, reviewing my recommendations.

In case you're wondering...

I've been doing short reviews for a while as part of this blog. Here's one:

If I can cover that much ground in 20 minutes, imagine what you can get in 60?

Back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Update: Keyword Research Tools Showdown (Wordtracker)

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:10:50 -0800

I did Wordtracker a disservice in my keyword research tools showdown last week. I am a long, long-time fan of their toolset. So long, in fact, that I'd neglected to thoroughly examine the slick new interface they've got, as well as a couple of additional tools.

I'm a little embarrassed, but I'll get over it. In the mean time, here are the features I missed:

First, they have a neat 'In Anchor and Title' measurement that shows:

The number of pages that include the target phrase in their title tag.
The number of pages with a backlink that includes the target phrase as the link text.

That's a great way to get a high-level look at competition.

Next, they've updated their KEI formula. I am not a huge fan of KEI in general, but a quick look at the results tell me it's reasonably accurate at this point. The only time it goes a little awry is for keywords with very low search volumes.

There are more features, as well, but these two alone make Wordtracker a must if you're a pro.

Thanks to Mal Darwen at Wordtracker for pointing out my errors without cursing at me.

You can get a tour of the new features, and how to apply them, on the Wordtracker web site, here.

I am not a Wordtracker affiliate. Nor are they paying me. Nor do I get free service, cars, a luxury jet, food for my guinea pigs or any other form of compensation from Wordtracker. I am just. a. fan. Suck on that, FTC.

Why Gourmet Died: Publishers, pay attention

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:17:44 -0800

I don't buy the whole "Gourmet was a luxury brand in a recession" economy argument. How'd they get through the 70s? The 80s? The early 90s?

They're dying, in part, because the publisher refused to accept the Internet as a business channel. Here's a quote from CBC News:

"The magazine industry in the U.S. has been hit by a slumping ad market, with Gourmet's ad pages down 50 per cent. The food magazine also lost out to internet recipes and food writing."

Well, duh.

How easily could Gourmet have avoided the chopping block? Oh, maybe change a title tag or two:

The hottest term out there? 'Recipes'. Percentage of title tags on Gourmet that include the word 'recipes'? Less than 1%. Most common first word in a title tag? 'Archive'.

Then there's the long list of '302' redirects:

The fact that there's one instance of duplication for every 10 pages:

And, of course, the endless PageRank leaks (most notably from the home page, which has 108 outgoing links):

Don't even get me started on the forums, where the first word in every title tag is? You guessed it: Forums.

The most telling statistic

The real death knell is their keyword count:

According to Compete.com, Gourmet.com gets traffic from 355 organic search terms.

Epicurious gets traffic from 8,040.

That has nothing to do with brand, and everything to do with SEO. Gourmet has thousands of pages, and thousands of great incoming links. They could have doubled or tripled their traffic with a concerted, ongoing SEO campaign.

Just a little effort

For Gourmet, just a little effort might have made all the difference. Their only number 1 ranking for a really choice term is 'gourmet'. That's great, but it's also branded and doesn't bring the kind of researchers the magazine needed to survive.

Fix a few inconsistent linking issues, get the editorial team going on real SEO copywriting, change a couple of 302s to 301s, and who knows? They might still be around.

More food for thought

Gourmet's SEO failures certainly didn't help. But there are other ways they could have generated more online traffic, more pageviews, and therefore more ad sales:

Have an RSS feed linked and subscription-ready on every page. Right now, they have a link in their footer that takes you to a page that then lists a bunch of feeds.
Provide easy sign-up to an online newsletter. Newsletter advertising is pure gold for advertisers. So build a list and use it. I couldn't find a signup form anywhere (may just be me?), and no, I don't want to register. I just want news.

The tipping point

I'll bet the tipping point for Gourmet came about a year ago, in a meeting. It went like this:

Person 1: We need to edit the title tags...
Person 2: Oh, don't be silly. We need titles that will intrigue the user.

Person 1: But we need visitors, too.
Person 2: We can't change the title tags. We can add a field to the database but it'll take 4 months.

Person 1: Can we remove some links from the home page?
Person 2: No. Everyone wants placement on the home page. We have to make them all happy.

Person 1: Can we add an e-mail subscription form?
Person 2: People have to register to receive e-mails. We need that.

Person 1 gave up. Person 2 won.

Well, you sure showed them, didn't ya?

It's a crime

Instead, we have a great publication, with top-notch creative and copy, passion for their industry and a strong following that's DOA.

It's criminal. It's a waste. And it pisses me off.

10 Comment Habits I Hate

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:28:37 -0800

I publish every reasonable (and some unreasonable) comments on my blog. My tolerance for dumbassery is pretty high:

But some tooth-grinding commenting habits cause immediate deletion. If you:

Grammar that know sense makes use. I like Yoda and all, but please at least proofread your comment? If I can't make heads or tails of it, my readers can't, either, so I'll delete it. And yes, I make allowances for folks typing English as a second language. But if your name is Bob Smith, check your grammar.
Link to unrelated content. Leave a comment on my post about canonicalization, and include a URL that links to a Cialis landing page. Riiiiiiight. That's your home page. Not.
Use the name "Godaddy Coupons" or some other search keyword. Either you're trying to link spam my blog or your parents realllly didn't like you very much. Either way, deleted.
Leave 10 comments on 10 posts in 1 day. OK, I won't automatically hit delete, but it sure makes me suspicious. Especially when combined with #3.
Use excessive brevity. If your comment says "Great!" it's not really contributing much to the conversation. It may give me a brief, happy glow, but I'll still delete it.
Write forever (aka verbal vomit). The longest comment I've ever received? 1200 words. 1200. I do accept guest posts - if you want to send me a 1000+ word essay, use e-mail please.
Get personal. I grew up in New Jersey. I have a very thick skin, and I know every possible insult relating to parentage and biology. So 'cretin' isn't personal. Threaten me, tell me various body parts are too small or remark on my ~~ginormous~~ somewhat oversized nose, though, and I delete. Cynics have feelings too.
Use naughty words. I run a PG-13 blog here. Please keep within the limits Hollywood has imposed. Which means: Use just about anything except a racial epithet or horrific biological descriptions and you're fine. Yet folks still step over the line. You won't make me blush, but I will click 'delete'.
Insert affiliate link in your comment. Why do I even have to write this?
Murder all that is right and known in Internet marketing. You can tell me I'm wrong, debate, argue, etc.. Post something that's just 100% wrong, though, and I will delete your comment. I am not some squishy "listen to everyone's point of view" person. I'm a "don't broadcast stupidity" person.

...then I'll delete.

Related rants

Conversation Marketing: Now On Kindle

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:22:56 -0800

My first Internet marketing book, Conversation Marketing, is now out on Kindle.

It costs a whole $1.99

You COULD read it for free, but for $1.99, why not buy it? Then you can geek out about reading an Internet marketing book on your Kindle, instead of reading plain old HTML. How cool is that?

Keyword Research Tools Showdown

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:42:53 -0800

Disclaimer: Thar be affiliate links here. I have to support this blog somehow, so some of the links in here will earn me a buck or two, should you choose to sign up for the relevant service. But that in no way affected my review. K?

At a recent event, someone asked me what the best keyword research tool is.

I said "Your brain".

But that got me thinking - there are lots of cool tools out there. How do they really stack up? I took a very subjective look at 8 of them. Here's what I found:

Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool: Free

Google's keyword research tool is free, and requires no registration. And, of course, they're pulling data from the busiest search engine on the web.

Features include:

Easy, intuitive keyword entry and research.
Keyword search volume per month.
Trending data.
PPC bid data, if you're doing pay per click marketing.
Ability to download a CSV file, if desired.

It's not a bad place to start. But it has some limitations:

It's meant to make you buy PPC ads. I find the data a little suspect when researching organic SEO terms.

Some keyword suggestions may make you scratch your head. I tested 'conversation marketing' and Google suggested, among other things, 'conversations with women'. Hmmm.

The verdict: The Google keywords tool is fast, free and built on an immense database. You'd be stupid not to use it, but supplement with data from another source.

WordTracker: $59/month

I've always loved WordTracker. You can build a keyword list, compare them across search engines, and get competitive data all in one place.

I won't bother loading my page down with screen captures - you can see a tour here.

Features include:

Ability to grab keyword data from multiple search engines, including Google.
Export to CSV and other formats.
Misspelling search.
An API, if you're wealthy and/or a glutton for punishment.

Wordtracker is definitely pro-grade. I do have a few concerns, though:

~~Their KEI formula seems a bit wonky, and doesn't always match up with our findings regarding keyword traffic, quality and competition~~. I did them a disservice here - Wordtracker has updated their KEI algorithm and it's looking a lot better now. I won't go into the math - it's Saturday.

Read my even better review of Wordtracker, where I discuss a number of massively cool new features here.

And, of course, it costs $59/month. It's an absolute bargain.

The verdict: Use this with Google's free tool and you've got a solid combination. If you're a pro, you have to have this or Keyword Discovery (see below). If you really want great data, get 'em both.

Wordstream's Free Keyword Tool

Wordstream's free keyword tool is more limited than Google's. Their goal is different, too: They want you to sign up for their pay service.

Unfortunately, that difference means Google's offering leaves them in the dust. Wordstream Free does a decent job of showing you possible synonyms and phrases, but offers no hard data regarding search volumes or trends. And they require that you enter your e-mail if you want to save the keyword list.

The verdict: Their pay tools are among the best in the industry. The free tool, though, does them a serious disservice. Wordstream, I suggest you do more to encourage free trials, and skip the freebies.

SEOPivot: You get what you pay for

SEOPivot is the most expensive of the tools I reviewed. It's also the best opportunity gap analyzer you'll find.

SEOPivot examines your web site, shows you keywords and ranking pages for those keywords, and shows the opportunity gap ('potential') for each keyword. You get to see your best potential keywords and your current placement for those keywords, all in one place.

Features include:

Export in multiple formats (pay versions only).
Report showing current ranking and ranking page.
Query manager, so you can find previous research.
API access (for a fee).

There is one potential drawback, though: SEOPivot builds your keyword list based on your site's content and traffic, not a keyword list. It's not a keyword research tool in the traditional sense. You can find missed opportunities, but you won't find totally unknown sources of traffic.

Oh, and it costs $140/month if you want to export reports.

The verdict: SEOPivot is the best way to analyze keyword potential for both your site and your competitors' sites. The only problem: Wordze (see the next tool) offers 70% of the feature set at a far lower price, and a keyword research tool. Be sure you've got WordTracker or something similar to triangulate results.

Wordze: A Swiss Army Knife

Wordze has by far the broadest toolset under one virtual roof. Features include:

API access with basic membership.
Competitive research similar to SEOPivot.
Site analyzer for keyword richness.
Keyword manager.
Keyword research toolset.

I admit, I'm biased - I've written about Wordze before. But there's a reason: They offer the broadest toolset I've seen, and they do it at a very reasonable price: $39/month.

You can also try some Wordze features for free. There's a daily limit on queries, though, so don't expect to really give the system a workout.

The verdict: No matter how you look at it, there's no real downside to using this tool. Bloggers, search marketing beginners and pros looking to supplement existing tools must buy Wordze. It doesn't bring anything new to the table, but it does put all the traditional fare in one place, and it's a breeze to use. ">Order it.

Keyword Competitor: Did I miss something?

Keyword Competitor is puzzling to me. It's got the most polished interface; it offers some brilliant competitive research tools similar to, or even superior to, SEOPivot. And it lets you monitor competitors.

But I can't help feeling like this is a re-digestion of the Wordze and WordTracker toolsets.

It does offer competitor monitoring, which is unique among the tools I reviewed. But that's not enough to justify the $95/month expense.

The verdict: If you don't yet have a competitive keyword research tool, have a look at Keyword Competitor. Be sure to compare it to others, though, and let me know if you figure out the compelling difference between this and Wordze.

Keyword Discovery: Keyword geek paradise

If you're a compulsive researcher, Keyword Discovery is the choice. Their database is humungous, export options abound, and you can slice and dice your data from more directions than a blender on 'mince'.

Features include:

Standard keyword research stuff: Searches, competition and the like.
Misspelling finder.
Ability to restrict data to Google, Yahoo!, etc..
Ability to restrict data by industry, region or question phrases (my favorite, as you can see here.

At $70/month I've not regretted the fee, and I've used Keyword Discovery for a couple of years.

The only minus? They offer some tantalizingly cool additional features, but you have to pay for an upgraded membership of at least $199.95/month to get access to them. Sigh.

The verdict: If you want to out-geek everyone in the room, this is the tool for you. Order it.

Recommendations

If you're looking to assemble a keyword research toolset, here's what I suggest:

For pros: Sign up for Keyword Discovery and SEO Pivot. Use Google's keyword tool to double-check data. Add WordTracker if you want the best kung fu around.

For bloggers: Wordze has everything you need. Add in Google's keyword tool and you're set. Add in Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker later on, when you're feeling plucky.

SEO and Your Business Model: Site Review of eHubPensacola.com

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:14:06 -0800

For this week's site review, I took a look at eHubPensacola.com.

My advice:

Build a search-optimized home page.
Focus on the business model. You're offering coupons and discounts. Make sure folks can get access to them quickly and easily. Then use that to build a relationship and get visitors to purchase membership.

SEO and Business Models: CM Site Review #4 from ian lurie on Vimeo.

Fix canonicalization problems (part 3 of 3)

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:26:00 -0800

This is part 3 in a series about canonicalization issues. Part 1 defined canonicalization. Part 2 gave advice for tracking down canonical problems on your site. This article deals with fixing the problems you just found.

Now that you've found your canonicalization problems, you need to fix them.

I've got 5 solutions for ya:

1: Just fix it

The best way to fix canonicalization problems is to fix them.

If you link to your home page 4 different ways, pick one and make your links consistent.

If you added query strings like ?link=1234 all over your site so that you could track clicks, get rid of them. Use something like event tracking in Google Analytics, instead.

Got session IDs all over the place? Get rid of them, and use cookie variables.

Repair whatever it is that's creating multiple URLs for one page of content.

This is hard work. Doing most things right involves hard work. The payoff, though, is that you don't have to depend on weird, semi-supported tags like rel=canonical or huge webs of complex 301 redirects.

And, if you really fix the problem, then the fix scales: New pages and content will behave themselves, and you'll have less work in the long run. Anything else is a duct tape. Which, contrary to popular myth, won't fix everything.

Good: Works forever. Makes your site well-coded. Builds good karma. Won't fail when the search engines buy each other or change their minds about standards or whatever.

Bad: Requires higher thought.

2: Robots META tag

You can use the robots META tag to hide all but one version of the guilty pages.

Say you've got a canonicalization problem that looks like this:

http://www.mysite.com/products/
http://www.mysite.com/products/?referrer=homepage
http://www.mysite.com/products/?referrer=catpage

...where all of those URLs go to the exact same page.

You can fix the problem by telling search engines to ignore the page at all but the first URL. Add this in the <head/> element:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

Important: You need to use some kind of conditional logic to only show that robots tag when there's a 'referrer' attribute in the URL. Here's what it'd look like in plain English:

IF there's a thing called "referrer" in the URL, then insert <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> in the page.

And in PHP:

if (.$_GET['referrer']) {
	echo "<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex,nofollow\">"
}

I'm at best a rookie PHP developer, so let me know if I screwed this up.

Without the conditional logic, you'll hide every instance of the page, including the nice short one.

Good: Easy. Appeals to the spaghetti programmer in me.

Bad: Somehow, there's always one case you miss. Next developer down the line will probably delete it, laughing at you the entire time. Only works on dynamic sites.

3: Use robots.txt

Continuing the example from above, you could use regular expressions to exclude all urls that include "referrer" from the search engine index.

Something as simple as:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?referrer=

might do the trick.

Good: It's so easy. One little line in the robots.txt file and you're all set. Sweet!

Bad: If done wrong, may cause your site to fall into a black hole. Also, different search engines support robots.txt differently.

4: Use 301 redirects

If you have a case where the problem stems from inconsistent linking practices like:

http://www.mysite.com/
http://www.mysite.com/index.html
http://mysite.com/index.html
http://mysite.com

...where all four URLs point at your home page, you can use a 301 redirect to fix it.

Set up a 301 redirect from each of the 3 URLs you don't want indexed to the one that you do. When search engines visit your site, they'll scoot over to the correct page and index that one.

They'll even apply most of the link authority from the incorrect URLs to the correct one.

This is also your best bet if external sites are linking to the wrong home page URL.

Good: Easy (if you have server access). Approved by all search engines. Can also be done using a scripting language like PHP. Works for external links to your site, too.

Bad: Tedious. Requires server access (or a programmer). Done wrong, may create endless loops that turn your data center into a mushroom cloud.

5: Webmaster tools

Google Webmaster Tools will let you exclude parameters in the toolset. Log into Google Webmaster Tools, then go to Settings and click 'Adjust parameter settings'. Using the 'referrer=' example from #2, you'd do this:

Voila. Googlebot will strip out those URL attributes.

You can also set your preferred domain on the same screen:

Good: It's just forms and stuff.

Bad: May not prevent canonicalization problems. Depends on Google and whatever's going on in its pointy little head. Not supported by Yahoo! or Bing.

What now?

Now you know what canonicalization is, how to find problems with it, and 5 possible solutions. Start by checking your site. If you find a problem, sit down with your development team (if you have one) and work out a solution. Start at #1 as the best solution and work your way down.

Oh, and a piece of advice: Don't tell anyone there's a 2-5. #1 is what you want. Use 2-5 when all hope is lost.

Back to part 2: How to detect canonical problems on your site. It's easy-peasy!

Detect canonicalization problems (part 2 of 3)

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:22:13 -0800

This is part 2 of a 3-part explanation of basic canonicalization in SEO. Part 1 defined canonicalization and provided examples of the SEO issues it can create. This post shows how to detect a problem. Part 3 will explain how to fix it.

Detecting canonicalization issues is easier (thank God) than defining it.

I usually apply one or all of the following 3 techniques:

1: Detecting Canonicalization Issues Using Google Webmaster Tools

This section assumes you've already got a Google Webmaster Tools account, and that your site's verified. If you don't, or it isn't, go do it. I don't care if you think Google is spying on you - they're doing that anyway. You may as well get the benefit of the toolset.

Here's how you check for canonicalization issues:

In Webmaster Tools, click 'Diagnostics', 'HTML Suggestions'. Then check for pages with duplicate title tags. If you see a list like this:

...Google's detecting duplicate title tags on your site. Assuming you've used unique title tags on your site, canonicalization is the most likely cause of these duplicates.

For each duplicate title tag, click the '+' sign. If you see two URLs that are really similar, I'll bet my hat you've got a canonicalization issue:

Regardless, click each page URL and view the pages. If the content matches, you're in canonicalization purgatory:

Record the URLs for every instance of canonical chaos (sorry, couldn't resist). Google Webmaster Tools makes this easy: You can just click the handy 'Download this table' link and get a CSV file.

2: Detecting Canonical Issues Using A Link Checker

You can also use a link checking tool and list page title tags. Again, look for duplicates and check for canonical confusion.

3: Using Search Results

If you used the same title tag on every page of your site, then title tag reviews won't help. Here's what to do:

Go to a page of your site.
Copy one phrase that you think is likely unique. So "Click here for more information" isn't a good candidate. "Curmudgeon's Web Copywriting Site Clinic on Tuesday" is a good one.
Go to the search engine of your choice, and search for site:www.yoursite.com "your phrase".
If you see something like this, you may have a problem:

This is a very poor method for detecting canonicalization issues, because it'll detect every single instance of duplication, throughout your site, regardless of the cause. It's also hit-and-miss, because search engines may actually drop some duplicates.

But, if you click 'repeat the search', you'll get a list of duplicate pages. Then you can sift through the list and check for problems.

Another option: Getting fancy

You can also build your own site crawler, if you're a hardcore geek. We did that at Portent years ago, and use it to automatically detect canonical problems.

If you don't live and breath PERL, PHP or Python, though, I don't recommend it. You'll end up like me.

Back to Part 1: Canonicalization defined

On to Part 3: How to: Fix canonicalization problems

Ever onward...

Tomorrow, I'll write about fixing canonicalization issues.

Canonicalization Defined (part 1 of 3)

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:46:51 -0800

This is part one of a 3-part series on canonicalization. Why 3 parts? Because it ended up being too dang long. Parts 2 and 3 will go live tomorrow and Thursday, respectively.

It's a long word, I know, but canonicalization (not to be confused with 'canonization') is at the heart of SEO. Get it right and the world is your oyster. Get it wrong and you're slogging uphill forever.

Canonicalization defined

According to Wikipedia, canonicalization is "a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a 'standard' canonical representation".

Okaaaayyyy.

For our purposes, canonicalization means 'having one address and only one address for one page of my web site'.

BTW, it's spelled with one 'N'. There's no such thing as 'cannonical'.

An example

You're still puzzled. I can practically hear your eyebrows knitting together. So here's an example of a canonicalization problem:

I run a blog called Cocoa Heaven, all about chocolate. On it, let's say there's a page about dark chocolate bacon cupcakes (there really is). That page exists at:

http://cocoa-heaven.com/dark-chocolate-bacon-cupcakes/

OK, no problem. That address represents the location of my article.

But maybe I link to it from another page on my site at:

http://www.cocoa-heaven.com/dark-chocolate-bacon-cupcakes/

These are two different canonical addresses. We're representing the same information at two different virtual locations.

D'oh. That's a canonicalization problem. Even though you and I know perfectly well they're the same thing, search engines don't.

A search engine comes along, crawls the link from the home page to the non 'www' address, then crawls the 'www' link. It sees two unique web addresses with duplicate content.

The problem

Now the search engine has to decide which page to index. Search engines try to filter out duplicates. This is not a penalty - it's their effort to provide unique, relevant results.

This filtering will create 3 problems for your search engine optimization efforts:

Diluted link authority. Say two bloggers visit the bacon cupcake article. One finds it at the non 'www' address, by clicking the home page article link. The other happens upon it from the post where I mistakenly used the 'www' address. They each link back to it, but they've used different canonical addresses. Since every link is a vote, your vote's been split. Instead of a single address having 2 votes, each canonical address has 1.
The content flip. If both canonical addresses have the same authority, you may find they 'flip flop' in the search results, with one address showing up one day and the other showing up the next. I can't prove it but I strongly suspect this hurts your SEO efforts, as your content doesn't 'age'.
The maintenance nightmare. Your marketing team dutifully interlinks blog posts on your site. But they use both versions of the address. 3 years later, you log in to move some pages around, and find you have to chase around to find both canonical addresses. Annoying.

In most cases, number 1 is the real crisis. If the canonicalization problem is minor (such as mixing 'www' and non-'www' addresses) then it's all about loss of link authority.

However, other forms of canonicalization issues can throw an entire site structure into flux, and make number 2 into the biggest problem. When that happens, large portions of your site may drop out of the index. I'm talking cats-and-dogs-living-together, find-your-rosary-beads kind of issues.

Types of SEO canonicalization problems

From most to least serious, here are the types of canonical issues I've run into:

Session IDs. For whatever reason, your site tacks a unique session ID onto every page, so www.mysite.com becomes www.mysite.com?jsessionid=asdf230498q234. This is unique for every visit, so there are infinite canonical addresses for every page on the site. There's Trouble in River City.
Inconsistent URLs. You have a dynamic site that generates URLs like www.mysite.com?catid=1&subcatid=234&prodid=33. Not a problem, SEO-wise. Unfortunately, you can reach the same product at www.mysite.com?prodid=33 and www.mysite.com?catid=1&prodid=33, and all 3 links are used at random. Not good.
The blown rewrite. You've just set up a nice, clean URL structure on your site, so that you now have URLs like www.mysite.com/shoes/running. But many pages on the site still use www.mysite.com?catid=1&subcatid=234, and that doesn't redirect to the new, friendlier URL. Yikes.
The tracking code. You use a special tracking code like www.mysite.com/?source=a0923 for every link on your site, so that you know what folks click. Or you use those codes for banners you place on ad networks. Either way, those links are now in the wild, and create huge canonical tangles. Get your conditioner out.
Default page confusion. On your site, www.mysite.com/shoes/ and www.mysite.com/shoes/index.php go to the same page. Sadly, you and/or a few dozen partner web sites use these two links interchangeably. Another yikes, but easy to fix (learn how in Part 3).
WWW mixups. I covered this one above. Both 'www' and non-'www' addresses work on your site. There's no redirection. And you've used both versions interchangeably. Sigh. Don't worry, though - it's fixable.
Case issues. To a computer, 'a' and 'A' are different characters. If you capitalize part of your URL one time, and don't capitalize it the next, you may cause all sorts of duplication problems. Hard to detect once it's done, so I suggest keeping everything lower case.

There are more. If you think of some, post 'em below.

On to part 2: How to detect canonical problems on your site. It's easy-peasy!

Things you can do

10 Words on a Line, Please

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:10:38 -0800

Reading online ,10-15 words on a line is best.

Don't take my word for it anymore. I'm tired of arguing with you.

Just go over and subscribe to the Designer Bookshop Newsletter.

They're design geniuses, and they say stuff like this:

It is important that the columns are set to a length that is "proportional" to the type size. A practical guide to find the right length is that a columns row should contain approximately 10 words...

Call to action matters: Site Review #4

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:27:16 -0800

This week we review HealthyHalo.com. I focus in particular on the call to action, with a light sprinkling of SEO at the end:

Call to action: CM Site review #4 from ian lurie on Vimeo.

Things I learned this week

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:22:54 -0800

Google confirmed they ignore the keywords meta tag. Thank you thank you thank you!
Seth Godin makes mistakes. At least, according to Danny Sullivan and Lisa Barone. And me, if it matters. You still rock, Seth, but own up, OK?
Google will never, ever give up on social media and wiki stuff.
I cannot care for goldfish.
No brand can remain silent when they screw up. Not even American Girl.
Bidding on brands is even making it to TV.
America's infrastructure is doomed. Remember I said this six months from now, when my office is underwater.

Google Sidewiki Hacks

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:35:12 -0800

Already found two useful hacks in Google Sidewiki, although I still wonder why it's around.

Make links work

If you create a link in a Sidewiki entry, Google adds on some annoying extra stuff, so that:

www.portentinteractive.com/services.htm

becomes

www.portentinteractive.com/services.htm&sa=D&sntz=1

That's an invalid link, and it'll give you a 404 error every time.

The fix is easy: When you insert the link into Sidewiki, add any query string you want to the end of your URL. So the URL above becomes:

www.portentinteractive.com/services.htm?this=that

Now, when Google adds their stuff, you get:

www.portentinteractive.com/services.htm?this=that&sa=D&sntz=1

A valid link. Woo-hoo!

Turn off Google Sidewiki for your site

This is a little trickier, and could have SEO implications, so use it carefully. It's also uber geeky, so skip it if code makes your head hurt. But, if the reputation management implications of Sidewiki catch up with you, it'll be worth investigating:

Google Sidewiki is URL-driven. So, if folks do Sidewiki entries for 'www.portent.com', then Sidewiki will only appear for that URL.

It won't appear for, say, 'www.portent.com#leavemealone'.

So, you could write a script that does a 301 redirect to a bookmark, and randomly generate a different bookmark each time. The result:

Folks navigate to 'www.portent.com'.

They get:

www.portent.com#awev
www.portent.com#32fda

Etc..

Sidewiki will no longer appear, because there are no entries for that URL.

That's a lot of 301s, though. You could try a 302, or even go as far as doing some sneaky cloaking (sorry, IP delivery), and get away with it.

I'll update this page as more stuff comes up.

Google Sidewiki: Why?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:40:46 -0800

Since no one at any major search engine gives a flying crap about me, I didn't get an advance look at Google Sidewiki. This is an imaginary interview between me and the Google PR guy who, if he had given a flying crap about me, might have called to demo the tool:

PR Guy: You can easily contribute to any web page and help others...
Me: But, why?

PRG: You can get expert insight into important topics...
Me: You mean, like I already do, on their web sites?

PRG: You can comment on pages...
Me: You mean, like I do with comment forms?

PRG: You can learn from others who visited a web page before you...
Me: But what if they've got ulterior motives? Like slandering someone?

PRG: We have a complex algorithm to handle that...
Me: The same way you handle paid links? God help us all.

The point

But, why?

I don't see the point to Sidewiki. We can already bookmark, annotate, save, Evernote, copy, summarize, scrape, subscribe and who-knows-what-else with web content. Do we really need another tool?

Uh-uh.

A reputation management nightmare

Even worse, this tool looks to be pretty easy to manipulate. Write a nasty Sidewiki note, write it well and with sophisticated language, and get enough votes. You'll be able to put your own negative imprint on any site you want.

By the way, you can insert links into Sidewiki comments. See Michael Graywolf's Tweet on the subject.

In the reputation manangement nightmare category, today is a real winner. I was originally going to rip Seth Godin a new one for his Squidoo Brandnapping project, but Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media did it far better.

What you need to do

Go install Sidewiki. Go to each of your web sites. Write a page description as the page owner, so you at least occupy some of the Sidewiki bar:

Watch the Sidewiki for each of your sites, carefully, and vote down bad stuff.

Hope Sidewiki goes the way of Orkut, Knol and their kind.

AdSense: Sometimes, Relevance Gets FUBAR'd

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:52:41 -0800

And now, a comedic interlude courtesy of Google AdSense:

That FOREX trading banner showed up at the top of yesterday's post, 10 Surefire Ways To Burn Money.

If I'm the advertiser, I'm clicking 'exclude' in AdSense right now. Of course, most folks never even check their reports. Which is yet another great way to burn money.

Michael at Portent found this beauty.

You can see some even funnier ones on the post Elizabeth did for the Portent Blog.

10 Surefire Ways To Burn Money

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:42:59 -0800

Hire one contractor to design your site, then send the development work to an offshore company. Guaranteed to produce a Frankenstein monster every time.
Make your IT/development team build the entire site, with little or no input from the sales, marketing or fulfillment teams. You'll spend at least twice the initial development cost on post-launch changes, I promise.
Run your own pay per click campaign after reading one e-book by someone who says they Beat Google. The money won't burn, in this case, so much as it will vanish with a 'pop'.
Tolerate mediocrity because it's cheap. If you pay one person $50/hour, and it takes them 10 hours to do something, when someone else was going to charge you $250 to do it in one hour, did you really save any money? That should be a rhetorical question.
Host your company website internally. Wow, nice job - you're saving $30/month! Now go hire someone for $40,000 a year to keep the server running. Yeah! You showed them!
Build it from scratch. Build your whole web site and online store from scratch, custom. It'll cost 10x what it would have had you used one of a dozen great systems out there that will all do the same thing.
Put all your eggs in one basket. If SEO is working, why spend any money on social media, or PR, or paid search? You can just wait until your rankings collapse, then start from zero in Google Adwords. This will devour your profits AND, as a bonus, Google will charge you inflated bid amounts because you have no account history. Neat!
Ignore the analytics. See my previous post on the subject. All analytics do is let you review what's earning money and what's not. If you're looking to shred as many dollars as possible, don't bother looking at that pesky ROI report.
Embrace (stupid) change. Sure, you're getting a nice 3:1 return on your campaign. That's no reason to stick with it. Trash that sucker! Start a whole new campaign. Don't test anything - just start over. Weeeeeeeeee....
Do it yourself. You're the CEO of a company that designs windshield wipers. That's OK - you can still learn Wordpress and build your site. Those are 120 hours well spent, I'm sure. Cough

Stuff What's Related

Set a 1-hour SEO Consult Appointment With Yours Truly

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:47:23 -0800

Want a 1-hour SEO consulting call with me? Use this widget:

By the way, this uses a cool new site called Setster.

In SEO, Details Matter: Site Review #3

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:45:12 -0800

This week's site review is OnlineFloorStore.com - a solid web site that needs an SEO tuneup. Michael Weigand and I reviewed it together:

Site Review: SEO Details Matter from ian lurie on Vimeo.

You can download it in full size, too from this link.

Also, watch it all the way through for a shameless plug for a new SEO service we're launching over at Portent.

The plague that is Powerpoint

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:45:52 -0800

I'm striking out against the grand tradition of Powerpoint-as-outline, aka Powerlines. They're a fatal illness breaking out at conventions, conferences and in board meetings across the country.

The authorities would like you to think this is all under control. But trust me, THEY WON'T DO ANYTHING until it's TOO LATE, and we're all barricaded in our homes, fending off thousands of zombified Powerpoint addicts.

So we must take matters into our own hands.

Powerpoint slides should serve as:

Counterpoint or emphasis;
Background; or
Illustration and support.

They should not be:

A word-for-word transcript of your presentation;
A detailed outline of same; or
Torture inflicted upon your audience by way of severe eyestrain.

An example: Emphasis

The slide at the beginning of this post is supposed to express the horrors that can happen when Ian Gets No Chocolate. So, instead of a bunch of words, what if we tried:

That image works admirably. Why? Because I, or the biologist who studies my corpse after I've been without chocolate for 3 full weeks, will be standing there. And I (or she) will be saying "Chocolate is good. Plus it keeps Ian from going insane. So when he hasn't for any for a long time, it can get ugly. We're just sayin'.".

An example: Illustration/Support

Or, you can support the same statement with this:

Powerpoint doesn't kill people...

...People filling Powerpoint slides with text kill people.

Pledge with me: "I shall not use Powerpoint as line-by-line documentation. I shall use Powerpoint to set environment and tone, and reinforce my presentation."

Amen, brothers and sisters!

Speaking gigs: Wordcamp Seattle, REBlogworld

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:55:51 -0800

Just a couple of updates:

I'll be running a session at Wordcamp Seattle on 9/26. The session is called "Internet Therapy: Tough Love For Your Blog". Send in your blog address in advance - I'll choose a few and then conduct a live blog review for the group. Lots of discussion and questions.

And, a couple of weeks later, I'll be at REBlogWorld talking about social media and branding.

If you've never had a chance to heckle me in person, it's not to be missed...

PS: Also speaking at Pubcon in November. Details coming soon.

5 Image Editing and Screen Capture Tools For Bloggers

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:13:10 -0800

If you're serious about blogging, then at some point you'll have to grab an image of your screen. And, in true Give-a-Pig-a-Pancake fashion, once you do that you'll want to edit it. Then you'll realize that video would be really cool. And so on.

Screen capture: Snapz Pro X

I'm probably old-fashioned here, but Snapz Pro X lets me capture any portion of my screen in all sorts of nifty ways. I've gotten very used to it - it's my old pair of screen-capture jeans.

Every Conversation Marketing screen capture of the last 2 years has been done on Snapz.

PC users: My apologies. Try Snagit, instead.

Screen video capture: Screenflow

Snapz includes a video capture tool, but the audio always drove me insane. ScreenFlow is a dream to use, though, with easy video capture and one of the most intuitive video editors I've ever seen.

PC Users: You have my sympathies. Try Camtasia, instead.

Screen Annotation: OmniDazzle

Sometimes, you need to outline/highlight part of the screen before you capture it. I use Omnidazzle.

PC users: I'm not sure. Anyone know of an analog to Omnidazzle for the PC?

Image editing: Fireworks

Say what you want, all you Photoshop snobs. I love Adobe Fireworks.

If you're more of a webbie than a designer, you'll find Fireworks a bit more intuitive (at least I do). The interface is straightforward, and the compression toolset is, in my experience, more effective.

Buy it here and you'll put food in my guinea pigs' mouths: Adobe Fireworks CS4

An absurdly large monitor

Yes, I had an Apple Cinema 24" display. I upgraded to a 30". I was a little embarassed, at first. But this ginormous monitor lets me have Fireworks, a browser, a few Finder windows and some other stuff all open at once. So, I can capture a screen, edit it, save it and then insert it into a blog post, all without minimizing or maximizing any windows. It truly has made me more efficient.

Plus, I can hide behind it when I'm feeling anti-social.

Buy it here and you'll feed my guinea pigs for generations: Apple Cinema 30-inch HD Flat-Panel Display

Related stuff

Here's the thing about marketing...

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:21:07 -0800

...it's only as good as the product you're selling, and your knowledge of the product.

See, I can write some great copy, and we can pull together a gorgeous web site, and then we can add all sorts of whiz-bang Web 300.0 stuff to it.

We can make the cart really usable, too.

And you'll sell a few things here and there.

But if the product sucks, word will get around, fast. The only things that spread faster on the internet than bad reviews are celebrity sex tapes and leaks about Apple's next product.

And, if you can't tell me why your product is special, how do you expect me to tell the world? It's true, I'm good. But I ain't that good.

Great products are rare. And great.

On the positive side, great products rock. There's nothing I enjoy more than getting to help grow a really great business that has a really great product.

You might even (gasp) want to let the marketers talk to you about your product before it's done. We might have some insight that can make your product, or service, or whatever, really great.

Should I choose marketing or SEO?

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:05:12 -0800

Yes.

5 sources of content you didn't know you had

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:53:03 -0800

Content. I'm always harassing my clients to produce more content. It's essential to good SEO and delivers value for visitors. It's a pain in the neck to create new content. But chances are, you've got lots of great stuff already.

1. Your local stores

If you have local stores or independent retailers who sell your product, create a directory that lists them all. A 'directory' means someone can find every single retailer in the directory by clicking.

For example, on momAgenda, clicking on a state takes you to a list of retailers. If you can click to it, so can search engines:

2. Transcripts

If you have any video or audio, even if it's not currently on your site, get it transcribed. There are a lot of services that'll do this at a low price.

Then post the video or audio, and link to the transcript. Voila. Lotsa content. Here's an example with the transcript on the same page:

Oh, and for all you poor little kids who's schools didn't let you watch Obama's speech, you can watch it here.

3. Manuals

Product manuals, company training materials and specifications can all make useful additions to your site. Your customers will appreciate the online manuals. Training manuals will attract links (make sure it's OK to publish them, of course). And any data sheets about your product help establish trust.

Kodak does it well:

4. Glossaries

Ever write down the terms your sales team needed to know? Use that to create a glossary on your site. Trust me: Every industry, every organization, uses lots of terms that don't make sense to their customers and fans. A glossary is great additional content.

Go Fisher!

5. Reviews

Did a client tell you you're the best business decision they've made all year? Ask them if you can write it down. Then put it on your site. If you have a rolodex, go through it. Remember who praised, and drop 'em a quick line. I used to hate doing that. I still do - it's hard to ask for praise. But most clients want to help you succeed.

Content's where you don't expect it

Before you say "I don't have any content", think carefully. You'll find content all over your office. It's like a virus - the stuff just multiplies...

17 Internet marketing disasters, and how to prepare for them

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:22:50 -0800

I am not an optimistic person.

So, I spend lot of time sitting around planning for whatever catastrophes might strike me and my clients as we carry out marketing campaigns.

Here's a short list (yes, this is the short list) of the worst calamities and how I try to prevent them, or deal with them when they inevitably occur:

1. The typo

I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill typo. This is a case of stupid fingers that, oh, changes someone's product name from 'Colony Explorations' to 'Colon Explorations'.

The fix: A good proofing and editing workflow. Re-take that Mavis Beacon course. A little sense of humor can help, too: "All folks who can tell us what digestive organ was accidentally offered in our last e-mail gets 10% off".

Prevention: The best way to prevention this kind of error is to make your site easy to fix. Have a good, simple content management system. Then, when it happens, you can fix it in seconds.

2. The incorrect ad URL

A pay per click ad (think Google AdWords) has been running for a week when you discover that, instead of pointing at your client's dental web site, it's pointing at a chocolate factory.

The fix: If you're an internet marketing agency, give your client a refund. If you're an in-house marketer, expect to be flayed, just a little bit. Crying helps.

Prevention: Check the URL before you go live. Click every URL before you launch. Looking at your stats helps, too: If Google says you paid for 500 clicks, but your traffic reporting tool says you got 0, something's not right.

3. The botched update

A 'patch' you just installed to fix a security hole in your server or web site did just that. By taking the entire server offline. See? Now it's safe!

The fix: What we call a 'rollback'. An undo. CTRL-Z. If you didn't exercise prevention (see below), go get some caffeine. It's gonna be a long night.

Prevention: Reliable, effective backups, run daily. Even better, a spare server or a failover plan, if you have the money for one.

4. The rogue e-mail

Your carefully-designed, targeted e-mail designed for less than 3,000 members of your house e-mail list gets accidentally blasted to all 300,000.

The fix: Whatever you do, do not e-mail folks to apologize. The craptacular irony of this escapes most people. Put a profound apology up on the pages to which you link from the rogue e-mail. If folks contact you directly, reply with an apology. Apologize on your blog. Take responsibility, and never, ever, ever do it again.

Prevention: Watch that twitchy mouse finger.

5. The hijacked domain name

Your company is at abctech.com. You accidentally let it expire, and the day it does, some schmuck reserves it, parks 20 ads there and makes money off the clicks from folks who should be going to your site.

Chances are, he reserved it using a private listing service, so you can't find out who they are to send them a nasty letter.

The fix: If you hold the trademark to your company name and/or have a long, long history with that company name, send a complaint to ICANN. It's an involved process. But it's worth the effort. Read up.

Prevention: Make sure your registrar's expiration notices don't end up in your spam folder - add their 'from' address to your address book. Even better, put the domain's expiration date in your calendar, with a 60 day, 30 day and 14 day warning.

6. The lost traffic logs

Someone just deleted your entire Google Analytics account. All your data is gone. ACK.

The fix: Set up a new account and process your server log files using something like Urchin, which aren't so easily deleted. Also grab all those monthly reports you did (right?!) so you still have the historical data.

Prevention: Most software-as-a-service analytics tools can auto-email you reports. Get those reports every day. Save them. Also: Make sure your server is generating log files for your site, that those files are backed up, and that they contain all visitor, page, referrer and user-agent data.

7. Site held hostage

Your contractor suddenly decides to take a 3-week vacation and neglects to tell you. Or (this really happened) the contractor pouts and sits on title tag updates for months at a time.

Now you can't fix anything. You can't change anything. You can't even fill orders.

The fix: Contact the hosting provider and insist on access. Be persistent. If they balk, get your attorney on the line.

Prevention: At a minimum, you should have your hosting provider's phone number and permission to change passwords via phone.

8. Site held hostage, 2

Your design or development firm insists that they own your site. When you try to hire a new firm, they refuse to turn over the current web site, or they totally cut off access.

The fix: Read your contract. Unless it explicitly states that the designer/developer owns it, the entire site is a work-for-hire created for you. You own it. If the contract does explicitly state they own it, you can probably fight it anyway.

Prevention: Read the contract before you sign it. The print's small, and annoying, I know. Read it anyway. Look for a clause about 'ownership' or 'intellectual property'. If it even implies you don't own the completed work, feed the contract into the shredder.

9. The search engine ban

Everything's humming along, then bam: Your site vanishes from the rankings. You don't just move down - you're gone.

Take a deep breath. Scream if you need to. It can relieve stress. Now, do the following:

Do a search for your company name. Do you show up? Then you're not banned. Skip the rest. If you didn't appear, on to the next step:
Search for your web address. Again, if you show up, you're not banned. If not, then yeah, chances are you've been naughty and the search engines are punishing you.
Call your SEO person. Ask her, in a quiet voice, to please for f--k's sake figure out why you've been banned.
If necessary, call another SEO and ask if you can buy an hour of their time to check the site, too.

The fix: Get rid of whatever caused the ban. File a reinclusion request with the search engine.

Prevention: Don't use so-called 'black hat' tactics: Cloaking, massive link buying, redirection, hidden text, etc.. They're short-term at best. Also, track your incoming links as seen by Google and Yahoo, and track your indexed pages. Sudden changes in either may signal trouble ahead.

10. Checkout checks out

Your credit card processor goes kerploiee (Authorize.net had this happen recently). Your site's fine but you can't process any orders.

The fix: Remove credit card authorization for now, and continue accepting orders without authorization. Post a note saying you'll have to verify later.

Prevention: Ideally, have PayPal or Google Checkout (or both) set up as options, too. If the worst happens, customers can still use their credit cards.

11. The browser merry-go-round

Big Corporation releases their latest browser, which displays your site like a Picasso painting.

The fix: Get to work on your CSS.

Prevention: Stay abreast of new browsers. Download betas and test your site ahead of time. Follow CSS addicts like the folks at AListApart and SmashingMagazine. They breathe this stuff.

12. You send out the wrong coupon code

Oh, come ON people. This is the internet. Just change the code on your site, or add it. 'nuff said.

13. The cease and desist

Your new landing page or April Fool's Day hoax attracted lots of attention. You just got a love letter from some behemoth of a corporation. Big Corporation threatens to burn you to the ground, then salt the lands upon which you worked, if you don't immediately remove the offending page.

The fix: First, don't panic. The worst case is you have to comply. Read the letter. Decide: Is this really worth a court fight? Probably not. Cease. Desist. Live to offend another day.

Prevention: Check your team for common sense. Those who lack it don't get to write landing pages.

14. The screamer

A screamer is that one blog post or forum post that keeps showing up in the search results. Right under your listing. With '[your name] sucks' or '[your name] fraud' in the title.

The fix: A nice phone call to the writer might not be a terrible idea. They might remove their post after the CEO calls, apologizes for their trouble and explains what she'll do to fix it. If that doesn't work, you'll have to push them off page 1. It ain't easy. Find a really good SEO who knows a thing or 999 about reputation management. Give them a couple months. Pay them a lot. Send them chocolate. Pray.

Prevention: Own the rankings. Create subdomains like twitter.yourdomain.com and put all relevant tweets there. That'll rank for your name pretty fast. Help other sites, even competitors, move up, too.

15. The big one

At the precise moment that the electrical guy opens the rooftop transformer on your building, a crow decides it's had enough and crashes headfirst into the exposed wiring. The power goes off. The backup generators fail, too.

Bzzt. All goes dark.

The fix: If your site's static, and you have a backup copy, put it on a cloud service like Amazon S3 and point your domain at it. If it's dynamic, use Amazon EC2. If you can't get at the site and don't have a backup, or if you don't have DNS (domain name service) failover, practice your crisis communications skills.

Prevention: Regular backups that are stored somewhere besides your hosting location. We've been using Amazon S3 since our big one in July, and have been very happy with it. Also, backup DNS, so you can repoint domains even if your hosting provider is down.

16. The misprice

Someone posted the price as $9.99 when it should have been $999.00. 50 customers make purchases before you can fix it.

The fix: If you can afford it, fill the orders. I'm serious. Poke fun at your mistake. Let folks know you will never have a sale like that again, but here's 20% off for those of you who missed it. If you can't afford it, apologize and let folks know they'll have to pay more.

Prevention: Auto-notification if any price in your database drops by more than 50%. Also, proofing the edited product before and after it goes live. Threats don't work - I've tried that.

17. The rankings collapse

You're not banned, but your site's dropped off Google's front page for every important term. Gaaaah!

The fix: Wait a day, if you can. It's hard, but this may be Google jerking the algorithm, and your chain. If that doesn't fix it, start updating your site regularly (including the home page). Get to work on some link building, too.

Prevention: Ongoing, aggressive SEO and link bait. Fresh site content. Keyword diversity. Read blogs like Bruce Clay's, SEOMOZ and, I dare say, mine. We'll try to warn you if we know what's coming.

It WILL happen

No amount of prevention will keep away the gremlins. At some point, something bad will happen.

Have a plan for when it does.

And, even more important: Have a plan for after. Yelling and screaming does not count. Sit down with the team. Figure out what happened. Figure out how you can avoid it next time. Tell your customers what happened and how you'll avoid it, too.

The end result is a stronger site, a stronger team, and a stronger business.

SEO 101: Does the Description Tag Matter?

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:19:16 -0800

Short answer: Not to your rankings.

The description tag is one of those 'meta' tags you hear about a lot. If you clicked view >> source in your web browser, it'd look like this:

It's a bit of text that summarizes the page. There's no real limit on length. Most search engines will show the first sentence or two, so make sure your best stuff is at the beginning of the tag.

It doesn't impact rankings

The description tag doesn't impact the rankings. Or it has so little impact it's irrelevant. Either way, there's no point in stuffing it with keywords.

But it does impact clickthrough

That said, the description tag is important, and it pays to write a good one.

Search engines often use the contents of the description tag as the search 'snippet' on a search results page:

A well-written description tag will get more clicks. In testing, I've seen #5-ranked search listings get more clicks than #4 listings because of the description tag.

I've already talked about 3 things your description tag must contain.

More Writing?!

Now you're thinking, "Ian, you are a butthead. You make us do all this writing. Now you're telling us to write even more, but this time for some stupid meta tag that doesn't even help me move up in the rankings?!

Well, yeah, I am. But there are some alternatives.

3 ways to automate the description tag

You can generate your description tag automatically based on content on the page. Here are a few ideas:

If you're running an e-commerce site, grab the first 2 sentences of your product description and insert it into the description meta tag.
On a blog, grab the blog excerpt.
If you're using another kind of content management system, grab the first 2 sentences of the page content or, if you have both article titles and subtitles, insert the subtitle as the description tag.

If your developer says that's impossible, I don't know what to tell you. Oh, wait, yes I do: Fire them.

Make sure you can always customize your description tag, even if you do automate it. Here's why...

Optimize the description tag for clickthrough, not rankings

If a particular page on your site suddenly grabs a top ranking for 'Colonial Viper', you'll want to maximize clickthrough from that page. So you can change your description meta tag from this vanilla bit of fluff:

To something that tells the reader what they're going to see, like:

Photos of the coolest Lego-built Colonial Viper ever. I'd fly this frakking thing into battle any day of the week.

(it really is that cool, by the way - take a look)

Make that change and I promise you'll see 10-20% higher clickthrough on your listing.

Not rankings, clicks

Every time an SEO 'professional' tells me they helped a client move up in the rankings by 'optimizing their meta tags' I grind about a millimeter off of my molars in an effort to not knee them in some terribly sensitive spot.

But that doesn't mean the description meta tag is unimportant. Optimize it, and you'll get more clicks from the rankings you already have.

Related stuff

Legal Implications of Social Media: Attribution

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:50:49 -0800

Everyone else can debate the merits, the ROI etc. until they're blue in the face. The truth is, social media or whatever you call it is a great tool. But there are considerable legal implications. Don't let the implications stop you. Do be mindful:

Social media muddies attribution: It's increasingly hard to judge just who's responsible for the spread of this defamatory statement or that illicit video.

Here's an example. Say you create a corporate Twitter account. You accumulate 10,000 followers, and you follow most of them back.

Then someone posts ". @youraccount My apartment is full of mold."

Because of that little period, everyone who follows you and your brand sees the post. The disgruntled renter had only 10 followers. So her initial tweet wouldn't have caused her landlord any troubles. But she just expanded her audience by 1000x by piggy-backing on your account.

Maybe nothing happens. Or maybe an angry landlord sues the twitterer, and their attorneys decide to pull you in, as well. After all, you're a nice, deep-pocketed target whereas the renter is a hapless private citizen.

Not as unlikely as you might think. And while you might win, the average judge understands Twitter about as well as you understand the Uniform Commercial Code. They may or may not understand you're not at fault. So it's a crap shoot.

The fix: There isn't one, I'm afraid. Just keep an eye on your followers and be ready to block/ban anyone who gets out of control. Or let the chips fall where they may (my strategy) and assume no one's life is so utterly devoid of value that they'll sue you for being a defamation vector.

What do you think? Am I just being a FUDmonger? Or is there something to this?

Poorly-held secret: I went to (and graduated from) law school. I don't often use my education (I graduated with a B- average), but with organizations jumping on the social media bandwagon, I've dusted off my Black's Law Dictionary and put on my attorney cap for a few minutes. However, none of this is advice. There's a reason I graduated and went straight into marketing. Read this post to prompt discussion, not to design your company policy.

Title tags, text and images, Oh My! This week's video site review

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:45:39 -0800

Evan Fishkin joined me today to review SilverArcSearchMarketing.com.

Our big pointers: Cleaner title tags, better image compression and some work on internal site linking.

Title tags and graphics and text, Oh My! Review of Silver Arch Search Marketing from ian lurie on Vimeo.

eBoot Camp Book Review: It Ain't Pretty

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:26:10 -0800

In spite of my occasional tirade, I'm actually a fairly nice guy. If I read a book I don't like, I just don't write about it.

However, if I read a book that misinforms, is poorly researched and may harm the readers' businesses, I get angry.

Unfortunately, eBoot Camp falls into the latter category. And I'm... disappointed.

The Good

eBoot Camp (By Corey Perlman, published by Wiley and Sons, 2009) is a good, super-high-level look at launching a web site.

Perlman touches on things like usability, opt-in e-mail marketing and PPC. That's good.

The Bad

But he barely touches on them. I mean barely. The chapter on video marketing, for example, is 6 pages, large type. Of those, only 2 purport to explain why you should do video marketing.

The usability chapter mentions things like keeping content above the fold (that's good) and then goes off into a discussion of how much a web site should cost (that's bad).

The editing is poor, as well. Wiley left in stuff like "as appose to" and "grasp on the importance", which just doesn't read right to me.

The Really Ugly

None of this would lead me to write a negative review. For some folks who want to learn the what without the how, the book might work. And editorial gaffes happen all the time.

Then there's the stuff that's just plain wrong. I don't mean it's-a-matter-of-opinion wrong. I mean graphically, horribly, 'mission accomplished' wrong.

We can start with his meta tags obsession:

I like to review the top Google results in my industry and take a look at their web site's meta tags. If they are at the top, they most likely have an excellent set of meta tags. - pp. 7-8

I'm sorry, but this is utter crap. Meta tags? Seriously? But, I took a deep breath. He might mean the title tag. But he goes on:

Make sure your web designer has a firm grasp on the importance of making your web site search engine friendly. The litmus test question is "How important is it to create meta tags for my web site?" If they don't say "very important," then I'd consider finding another web designer. - pp. 11-12

What!? If I asked a designer what's important about SEO, and they told me "meta tags", I'd shovel them out the door so fast they'd get rug burn.

But it's OK. Maybe he meant 'title tag' again.

Alas:

In this chapter I'll cover how to provide a specific list of keywords that are just meant for the search engines. This list of keywords resides in your source code [behind the scenes] and is not visible on your web site... Your keyword list is located in your web page's source code, and usually starts with the header <meta name="Keywords"> - p. 37

Great, except the keywords tag doesn't affect search rankings. It. Doesn't. Perlman's statement is just plain wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG. And Wiley published it in a book?!

Perlman redeems himself in a solid chapter about title tags. Then he spins off into 1997 again:

Use keywords in your description tag because search engines like to review them when evaluating a site. - p. 59

Um. No they don't. The description tag can affect clickthru, but it has little or no effect on rankings. No. Effect. At. All.

But wait, there's more. In his chapter on blogging, Perlman recommends using blogger.com as your blog platform. His thinking is that Blogger is owned by Google, so you may have a better shot at ranking.

Assuming you follow his instructions and build a 6-9 page web site where SEO means keyword and description tags, you're going to need all the help you can get. That includes putting your blog on your web site, not on a third-party site.

He also suggests adding AdSense to your blog. I'm sorry, what?! AdSense reads the content on your page and places relevant ads. Which will most likely include your competition. So don't use AdSense on your company blog.

This book is 176 pages, large type, with only about 70 pages of in-depth content. The rest are exercises and stuff, which is fine. But at least 10% of what he's saying in here, particularly about SEO, is just plain wrong. No wonder people hate SEOs.

Responsibility

This is about responsibility, both on Perlman and Wiley's part.

I'm angry because Perlman is presenting these mistakes to small business owners - those who are most vulnerable to bad advice. It's deceptive. It's harmful. And it's irresponsible.

I'm angry because Wiley, who provided me with fantastic technical resources when I co-authored the Web Marketing All-In-One, clearly provided Perlman with John McCain's campaign staff.

I'm angry because I am sick - SICK - of having to explain to people why someone's shiny, glossy hardback book is misinformation.

Finally, I'm angry because this is yet another instance of someone writing a very superficial look at a complex field (which is OK) and then trying to pass it off as your ticket to success (which is bad).

Before you say it

Someone's going to post an angry comment about how they've used this book and gotten results. Here's a quick story:

When I was about 11, my friends convinced me to jump off the roof of my house holding a sheet over my head as a parachute. I know. Stupid.

I spiraled into the ground, accelerating at 9.8 meters per second. I was uninjured, partly because God protects the stupid, and partly because I landed in some juniper bushes.

That does not mean my bed-sheet-as-parachute trick was successful. It means I happened to land in juniper bushes.

If you used this book and moved up in the rankings, good for you. You've done well.

You also got lucky.

Things you should read instead

Read SEOMOZ's 2009 Biennial Search Ranking Factors, where the meta keywords tag gets the lowest score of any on-page factor.
4 signs an SEO firm is a fraud.
Google's own SEO starter guide, which I don't like, by the way. But it's still better than this book. By the way, it doesn't mention keyword tags. And it points out description tags are important only because they're used as search snippets.

Resources beat Knowledge: A survey of marketing gurus

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:46:54 -0800

Our resources are our network, research skills, intelligence and ability to communicate.

Our knowledge is the stuff we already know.

Resources crush knowledge, every time.

Why, Ian, why?

Here's why I'm writing like I'm in a philosophy survey course:

Several times in the last year, I've gone to Twitter, Facebook and such to get input from colleagues. I'll ask something like "Anyone else had trouble with [insert feature] in Google Analytics?"

Generally, I'm asking those questions because of a client project.

The result, nearly every time: Someone at the client's office sees that I actually asked others for advice, freaks out, and runs to their boss screaming OMG Ian is a freaking moron he's asking people on Twitter for help.

You can guess how I feel about it: Anyone stupid enough to not check their premises with their colleagues needs to get out of consulting. Period. Because resources are more important than knowledge.

I asked around to see what other folks thought. Ironic, huh?

Gillian Muessig, President, SEOMOZ:

Glad you asked - this is a pet peeve of mine and I am happy to weigh in strongly on this issue.

The question has more to do with traditional business relationship issues than with the technology of Twitter or other social media portals that enable swift/immediate answers to be at the fingertips of consultants. The underlying issue behind the IT Manager's actions has to do with one-upsmanship - in other words, he was in a pissing match with you and took the opportunity to label you as 'clueless' in front of his colleagues in order to build his own stature as an expert.

This has been a problem of in-house vs consultant relations since time immemorial. Here's my put:

Clients should be delighted to have hired an honest, capable consultant who brings great value to the table. And when that consultant doesn't have confidence about an answer to an important question at hand, the client should be THRILLED to see that the consultant doesn't bullshit his way through the issue, but immediately takes action, using all the technology and tools at his disposal to obtain the correct answer and guide the client safely through it.

The client can't ask the same question on Twitter and get the same answers from the same people. The experts don't follow them. You, the consultant have a number of tools at your disposal - and access to the best and brightest in your industry, of which you are a full-fledged 'paying' member, do have access to that knowledge bank. Not leveraging your assets in support of your client would be tantamount to selling a product and then holding back.

The most powerful people on earth will tell you time and again:

You do not need to know all the answers; you need only to know and have access to the people who do.

All that said: please remember not to share any proprietary information in order to obtain your answer. It appears that you respected that rule.

You can reach Gillian at SEOMOZ or on Twitter - @seomom

Rand Fishkin, Wizard, SEOMOZ

I personally think it's a wonderful way to tap into a network and crowdsource smart answers to tough questions and problems. I also believe that clients should be recruiting and hiring consultants based, in part, on the strength of their networks and ability to leverage that community to provide smart answers.

Rand is the Wizard of Moz. What else needs to be said? You can find him on Twitter at @randfish.

David Mihm, Local Search Guru

When you hire a consultant, part of what you are often hiring is the collective knowledge of that person's peers. Would you rather your consultant "muddle through" a "long, hard slog" wasting his time and your money trying to figure out a particular problem? Or would you rather he had the foresight to ask a set of experts in a specialized topic for their advice on your behalf? (And no, the reference to the utter failure of the Bush/Rumsfeld mentality to ignore intelligent peers was not accidental.)

Very rhetorical, David. But I get it. You can reach David at Davidmihm.com and on Twitter at @Davidmihm.

Dana Lookadoo, Yo Yo SEO

Peer collaboration is key. Just like in school, the person who asked the most questions was the one who usually aced the test. Asking a question has an unjust stigma - that the person doesn't know the answer. In reality, the one asking the question is usually the thinker, the one who gathers information to come to the best conclusion and with full picture of the options and situation.

SEO and online marketing are not exact sciences. The art comes in by exploring different approaches, ways of painting on the search canvas. I ask questions publically to open my horizons, to discover alternative approaches, the way an artist may use different brushes. Paint-by-numbers doesn't exist in this industry. It's highly important to collaborate with peers. Iron sharpens iron! Those who work in a closed system will rust and certainly loose rankings and traffic!

Dana is launching a new SEO company, YoYoSEO - launching soon. In the mean time, she's on Twitter at @yoyoseo. She's also done something I never did: Got on the podium at a few bike races.

Gab Goldenberg, Owner, SEOROI

I think the Pirkei Avot, or 'Ethics of Our Fathers', says something like: The fool thinks he knows it all. The wise man acknowledges what he doesn't know.

I had a similar experience, asking for advice on the Google Webmaster Forum, since it was for my seo site. N I was like, "I'm an expert because I know enough when to ask..." That helped tone things down n got people's respect.

Gab Goldenberg is on Twitter at @SEOROI. He gets double props for citing Jewish teachings sufficiently obscure that I haven't heard 'em named since Hebrew school.

Todd Mintz, Founding member of SEMPDX, Writer on Search Engine Guide

Even the top guns in this industry haven't encountered every situation before...but chances are that somebody in your extended network has experienced it. It would be foolhardy not to reach out to your network for advice and insight ...doing so only benefits the client. The client should be stoked that many SEO consultants share information openly amongst themselves and they should know that SEO is a complex enough discipline where nobody knows it all.

Todd writes for the SEMPDX blog, is the Director of Internet Marketing and Information Systems at SR Clarke, and helped found SEMPDX. He's an underachiever. You can find him on Twitter at @Toddmintz.

Rebecca Kelley, Director of Social Media, 10e20

I did it all the time when I was doing Q&A at SEOmoz. One person on Twitter caught me tweeting his question and was like "I asked that!" but was totally cool with me asking others for their input. I think it's B.S. for a client to expect you to know the answer to everything -- a good client understands that a good consultant will know when to ask for help or do research/hunt to find the best answer when he doesn't know it.

I would never B.S. a response if I didn't know the best or correct answer -- that's misleading and can be harmful to the client. Better to reach out to your colleagues or strong network of experts through social media or other means to find the right answer than to provide nothing or the wrong answer.

Rebecca is the Director of Social Media at 10e20. She's a long-time link bait expert.

Resources > Knowledge

No matter what you do for a living, you have limited data storage. I topped out shortly after having children. That's when resources - your own creativity, intelligence, research skills and network - became more valuable to me than knowledge.

I will always maintain that resources are ultimately more valuable than your total knowledge. That's even more true as we collect larger and larger circles of friends, colleagues and connections through online communities.

Caveat: If you have no knowledge of a subject, no amount of resources can save you. OK?

I'm going to add input from other online marketers as it comes in. Did I mention August is a terrible time to try to reach folks?

Related stuff

18 ways to kick your competitor's ass, online

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:24:50 -0800

I've tried nice, mild titles like 'techniques for better internet marketing'. Figured this might grab folks' attention a little more effectively.

Let's face it: We all want to kick our competitors' collective asses. I've never met a competing CEO who I didn't like. Yet I still want to make them cry like little babies, "Stop it Ian, you're taking all our businesssssssssss!"

Here's 18 ways I've found particularly effective:

1: Pay attention to detail

If every form and link on your site works, guess what? You're in the top .00001% of web sites! Chances are, your competitor is not. Every time someone leaves their site because the 'more information' link leads back to the home page, that's one person who can come to yours.

You gotta test forms by hand, in my opinion. There are tools out there, but in the end there are bugs that can slip through.

For links, try Xenu on the PC and Integrity on the Mac.

2: Make your sales quote request form, or 'more info' form, 3 fields

Ask folks for 3 things: Their name, their e-mail address, and their question. Add the phone number if you want.

Your competitor is asking them for DNA data, mailing address, mother's maiden name, sexual preference, married status, etc. in a futile effort to 'prequalify' the leads. They're getting a lot of people whose moms were named 'asdfasdf'.

Make that form nice and small. You can always ask for more info later.

This form on the Trek website makes me weep with joy:

This one, from Schwinn, on the other hand, makes me think they're punishing me:

All I want to do is send you a note for God's sake! You want my mailing address? Really?!!!

3: Tell me what you do

Just come out and say it, OK?

This sucks:

"Widgets, Inc. is committed to our clients' growth and prosperity. We help clients leverage existing resources to make the most of their potential. We work with integrity and put our best effort into every job."

That drivel is not 'branding' or 'messaging'. It. is. drivel. Chances are it's also how your competitor writes.

This is better:

"Widgets, Inc. provides ball bearings of all sizes."

This is best:

"Get stainless steel ball bearings of all sizes, with a 1 year warranty, at Widgets, Inc."

4: Stop being paranoid

Let me find you on Twitter and comment on your blog. Let me whine, in public, via your site, about a problem I had on my last flight.

Then answer me.

I'm going to complain anyway. Why not take control of the situation? Your competitor won't. He's too busy hiding under his desk every time he finds a web page with his brand name and 'sucks' in the title.

5: Learn to use Google Adwords

I mean really learn it. Understand stuff like:

Negative keyword matching
Geographic targeting
Day parting
Dynamic keywords
Broad, phrase and exact match

Read up on Search Engine Guide

Your competitor is spending 3x more than she should. Get efficient on Adwords and kick her ass.

6: Learn to use a spell checker

I guarantee your competitor spells like he spent too much time with no ozone layer. Use a spell checker and you'll kick his fanny.

7: Learn to write

Lisa Barone says it best. I can only bow and say 'amen'.

8: Speed up your pages

Make your pages run faster. I don't care how fast they are now. Make them even faster! When I go to your competitor's site, I see this for 25 seconds:

In this case, I'll go kick their behind for you.

9: Take charge of your site

Your competitor shrugs and says "The developer says it's impossible" or "The designers say it'll take 2 months" every time he gets a suggestion from his marketing team.

Man up. Woman up. It's your site. It's your property. You paid for it. Go find whoever it is that's giving you a hard time, fire their sorry butts and start improving your site.

10: Put your contact information on every page of your site

Put your phone number and address on every page of your site. Every single one.

It'll help you move up in the local search results.

It'll also make me understand you're not hiding from me.

Your competitor fired someone for giving out the company phone number to a potential client. She shrieked "DON'T you REALIZE that means people will CALL US?!!!"

You will so totally kick their patootie.

11: Don't fall for con artists

There are 1000 new companies every day promising you #1 rankings, increased conversion rates overnight, blah blah blah etc. etc. BS BS BS.

Don't fall for it. And don't play the "I just don't know enough to know what's true and what's not" card either. Take responsibility: You know if something sounds way too good to be true. And you know if someone's a scammer.

You're smart - you're running a great business. Plus, you're kicking your competitor right in the arse.

12: Get rid of login requirements

Don't make me log in to check out, to download a whitepaper, or do anything else.

Yes, I've said this before. I will keep saying it until people clue in.

If I'm buying from you, just take my money and go happily away. If I'm downloading your article, be thankful I'm downloading it, and make sure your contact information is on every page of the article.

Your competitor has built a 12" thick steel door between the customer and any source of value. Knock gently on the door. When they open it, plant your foot in their butt.

13: Pay attention

Learn to do a little basic social media monitoring. Just check in once a week or so.

See a complaint? Go help. See someone complaining about your competitor? Consider how you can politely help them out. See praise? Say thanks.

That kind of responsiveness will get you a level of goodwill money won't buy. And yes, it'll boot your competitor right in the behind.

14: Answer e-mail

Whoa. Revolutionary concept, I know. But try actually answering e-mails from the web site. Even ones that don't look like a sale. If someone asks for advice, think of all the times you asked and received advice, and the adviser asked nothing in return. It's karma.

Your competitor's karma sucks.

15: Write every day

Write a little bit, and add it to your web site, every single day.

You'll become a better writer. Plus, you'll have a fresher, more interesting web site, move up in the search engines, and get a warm fuzzy feeling.

Your competitor's cold, black heart will never have a warm fuzzy feeling. Ever.

16: Dump the fads

Instead of hopping on Twitter and auto-following 300,000 people, try, I dunno, talking to 1 or 2. Or, don't use Twitter at all.

Just dump the fad tools and spam tactics.

Your competitor probably doesn't use them either. So don't put your butt right in front of their foot. They're reading this article too, remember.

17: Measure stuff

Use analytics. Learn what brings folks to your site, and what makes them buy.

I promise, your competitor is not doing that...

18: Don't be a slave to the data

...Or, they're testing the crap out of everything, even when the idea they're testing flies in the face of all logic and reason. I've seen companies (no longer with us) test themselves right into oblivion.

Trust your intuition, at least a little.

7 SEO Myths Dispelled

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:34:43 -0800

Time to explode a few more SEO myths. I've done it before, in case you want to see this blog's entire colorful history. Here are a few more things I hear about SEO that are utter bunk:

1: Black Hat SEOs are Unethical

BZZZZZZZZ. You're out. Black hat SEOs find loopholes in search algorithms and exploit them to move up in the rankings. They do things the search engines definitely don't like.

But saying that all black hats are evil implies that the search engines are on the side of good. And that's not really true. Even if you think they're cuddly now, Google will still eat you when it grows up.

Black hat SEO tactics are not, in themselves, unethical. And a black hat SEO is only unethical if they fail to tell their clients the implications of their tactics: When the loophole closes, the client could find themselves gone from the rankings.

Fantomaster writes about some of the misconceptions around black hat SEO here.

Some of my best friends are 'black hats'...

2: White Hat SEOs are On The Side Of Good

Untrue. In the last few years I've seen more clients screwed by 'white hat' SEOs who either

Don't know what they're doing; or
Make absurd promises to land their client; or
Sacrifice their client's brand and conversion rate for SEO.

So-called white-hat SEO is a delicate balancing act between sales, rankings and messaging. If you're not already a marketer, this kind of SEO is risky at best.

3: Rankings are absolute

Nope. Google (likely Bing and Yahoo! as well) now employs personalized search: Based on your previous searches, they customize the rankings pages, moving the sites they think you'll most want to the top of the page.

That can happen, by the way, even if you're not logged in to your Google account. Search engines also adjust rankings based on your geographic location.

So rankings are definitely not absolute. Better spend more time watching your incoming search traffic and less freaking out about rankings.

4: Search engines can now crawl Flash

Strictly speaking, yes, they can crawl Flash content. The same way that, strictly speaking, George Bush is a trained public speaker, and Bill Clinton was the picture of restraint.

Search engines crawl Flash content about as well as I dance Swan Lake.

5: Google now crawls javascript

See #4, above.

6: Buying PPC ads will influence your organic rankings

Come on. Buying ads doesn't influence your rankings...

7: SEO is a level playing field

...Buying a huge audience, becoming a major brand and then pounding your opposition into goo, on the other hand, works great. Aaron Wall has an excellent look at this.

Life, I'm afraid, isn't fair. Google misses some links, awards too much authority to others, utterly screws some companies and then undoes 90% of the damage and leaves the rest to rot.

I'm not saying SEO is pointless. Far from it. But I do recommend a diverse internet marketing strategy, and that you take what the search engines (and everyone else, including me) with a grain of salt.

Other stuff

7 TV Shows I Watch

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:14:27 -0800

Buh?... Ian's writing about TV? What the heck?

Here's the deal: It's Friday. It's 6:15. I've been up since 5 AM. I went to bed last night at 2 AM after wrestling with WordPress for 8 hours straight (I won. HAH.). So, I'm in the mood to mix things up a little.

The TV shows you watch can provide inspiration, or suck the intelligence out of you with a greedy slurping sound. I'm not saying one's better than the other - just that these are my favorites, in no particular order:

Mad Men. If you haven't seen this show yet, crawl out from under your rock and watch it. Brilliantly acted and written, it provides a look at the heyday of the advertising industry (which I missed by about 40 years). But it's a lot more than a nostalgia trip. Mad Men has a wicked sense of humor, a great take on history and can teach you a thing or two about marketing. You can get Season One
and Season Two on Amazon.

It probably comes as no surprise that House is my idol. Plus I've explored the role: When I ruptured two discs in my back, I spent 6 months limping around, stoned on Vicodin. It was very educational. It's painful to watch him be an utter jerk, but House's skewering of other jerks that come along is a joy to behold.

Battlestar Galactica. Wow. Not sure what to say about this except that it's not a science fiction show. I mean, it is, but the space battles, high-tech gadgets and clanking bad guys are just the setting for some real human foibles. While the series finale was, in my opinion, a crime against the franchise, the show is brilliant and the acting is great. If you watch nothing else, watch Exodus, Part 2. I practically had a nerdgasm. I'm hoping Harry Hannukah will bring me The Complete Series this year.

The Deadliest Catch is a guilty pleasure for me. I mentally consign reality show directors to the lowest circles of Hell. But there's something about what these guys go through that makes me grateful all I have to worry about is title tags, headlines and Google's next move.

Trueblood: I'm sure I'll be following reality show directors to Hell for loving this show. I can't help it. When the heroine laughed at the first vampire she meets because his name is Bill, I was hooked.

Burn Notice has Bruce Campbell, a freakily attractive crazy woman (by 'freakily' I mean 'odd') who likes to blow stuff up, and a main character so ripped my wife doesn't mind that I stare at the freakily attractive sociopath. The show also happens to be pretty dang clever. And it has Bruce Campbell. Army of Darkness, anyone?

My son and I watch The Clone Wars regularly. The animation is unusual and fun to watch. And it's got lightsabers. LIGHTSABERS. C'mon, what's not to like?

Related, or not-so-related stuff

33 Books an Internet Marketer Must Read

Sorry, I'm tired. That's all I got.

SES San Jose Interview, Part 1

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:02:09 -0800

Gregg Makuch of Enquisite interviewed Dana Lookadoo and myself on the first day of SES. Watch through to the end for a True Ian Moment:

How To: Ask A Blogger For A Review

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:55:21 -0800

A review from an 'a-list' blogger, or even a 'z-list' blogger, can bring you customers, prompt discussion around your product and, at a minimum, create a nice, authoritative link.

That causes a lot of folks to 'write' (I use the term advisedly) wonderful notes like this one:

Dear blogger,
Love your blog! If you have a chance, please come look at my blog. I think we have a lot of the same thoghts and would appreciate a link. Thanks!

Name removed

While we may share a lot of 'thoghts', this person's e-mail will only make it out of my spam folder if I'm looking for examples for a blog post.

How to get a blogger's attention

If you want a blogger to write about your site, your product, your service or whatever else, you need to do four things:

Show me you're a real person, not a bot someone programmed to spam every person who's ever written a post with the word 'web' in it.
Show me that you know me.
Show me you're someone I'd like to talk to.
Prove that my review would help my readership.

A great e-mail

Here's an e-mail that would get my attention:

Dear Ian,
Just read your post on monitoring social media. Thanks - I've sent it around to some other people at my company.

We're working on a social media monitoring tool of our own. If your readers liked your post, they might be interested in checking out our product. Here's a link to a test version: [link here].

Feel free to try it out. You can write a review any time you like - all I ask is that you let me know when you do.

Thanks,

John Doe
Big Corp

Aaah. Like a breath of fresh air. This person connected right away:

They showed that they've at least read my blog once. Even if they read it just to get my attention, at least they put in that much time.
They flattered me a little. Hey, face it, flattery works. Not silly flattery like "YOU ROCK DUDE!"; something aimed at a specific post.
There's a clear connection between their product and my readership.
And he even gave me a link and permission to review the product.

Plus, he can spell - major bonus.

It's about connecting

If you want me to take the time to look at your site, learn your product, and write about you, show me that you've taken the time, too.

You could even (gasp) try the phone...

Related stuff

Video Site Review 1: Improve Subscription Rates

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:26:57 -0800

Just recorded our first video site review. This one's American Parkour.

Biggest problem on the site: No clear subscription model. You can subscribe for newsletters, etc., but they're not front-and-center. And this site's subscription list is clearly the biggest asset they can have.

So, here's the video: Tips for American Parkour to improve their online subscription rates.

Tips for better online subscription rates: AmericanParkour.com from ian lurie on Vimeo.

Other Stuff

6 Most-Abused Words at SES San Jose 2009

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:04:29 -0800

Just got back from SES San Jose. It was a great show in a lot of ways, but some folks were flinging words around like they actually knew what they meant (but didn't).

Rather than directly humiliate someone, I've compiled a list of terms, the most common abuses I heard, and any corrections needed. If you're speaking at SES next year, please print this out and memorize it, first:

Attribution: Repeated 999999 times, used correctly about 10 of those. In web analytics, attribution is assignment of an event to a source. It does not mean any of the following: Improving sales (Overheard: "I attributed sales 90%"); distribution (Overheard: "The bell curve shows attribution among the population"); something you're only supposed to do in private. I made that last one up.

Black hat: Folks referred to any form of link building as black hat; social profile building as social media black hat; all cloaking as black hat; to themselves as black hat if they thought it'd improve their status at a party. Trust me, until you've 50 laptops all set up via a proxy servers so you can Digg something to the front page (and no, I have NEVER done this) you are not black hat. Unless you know what a Markov Chain is, or you have a pyramid linking network of, oh, 500 sites, chances are you're not black hat, either.

Engagement: Properly used in most instances, but repeated so many times I started to feel like I was reading an over-optimized web page. "Engagement is critical so you need to engage with users via engaging site features for best engagement". I was ready to tear out my eardrums by day 3.

Hits: Amazingly, people STILL say "I got 500 hits on my web site!". While I'm understanding if you're not a web marketer, I heard at least 3 panelists use the term. No wonder we're in a deep recession. A 'hit' is one file downloaded from your server, one time. A web page with 8 images counts as 9 hits (the .html file plus the 8 images) if a browser visits the page. So 'hits' are an awful measure of site traffic. Read up and you can figure it out.

ROI: Say 'ROI' to me 3 times fast and see what happens.

Semantic SEO: Do me a favor? If you think 'semantic SEO' means 'add more keywords to the page', keep it to yourself. If that is what semantic SEO really is, than we all do it, all the time. Somehow, though, I think semantic SEO is more about using structural elements to reinforce the meaning of a page.

That's all that occurs to me in my current sleep-deprived state. Which, all told, means it was a pretty good conference.

Other stuff

Download my free e-book on social media monitoring
Learn 22 things you don't know about your customers
Buy the Web Marketing All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies, and
help my kids pay for college

Free e-book: Social Media Monitoring w/ Google Reader

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:07:11 -0800

I've been kind of a jerk lately, even by my standards. My guilt is your gain, though - I just finished writing an e-book, and I'm making it available free, no strings attached:

The Fat-Free Guide to Conversation Monitoring shows you how to monitor what folks say about you in social media using Google Reader and a few keyword searches.

You can read it online in Scribd format, or download it, both from this link:

Download the Fat Free Guide to Conversation Monitoring

Disclaimer: There are some exceptionally cool social media monitoring tools out there. I am in no way trying to say you can do what those tools do using nothing but Google Reader. But it's a great way to start.

SEO is not a strategy

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:59:53 -0800

Today I ran an SEO copywriting clinic at SES San Jose. Lesson: We all need to remember that SEO is not a strategy.

SEO is a tactic. It's how you generate 'foot traffic' once you've created your product.

Before you start an SEO campaign, you need to:

Know what you're selling.
Know why it's unique.
Have a well crafted story. Not a lie - a narrative about your product/service/campaign/whatever that tells the audience why you're unique.
Already know how you're going to motivate your audience.
Have great copy. Don't write for SEO. Write first. Then optimize.
Have a well-crafted web site that was built with your audience in mind.

Only then should you invest in SEO. Or in any other tactic.

A million years ago I wrote a post about the fact that SEO is a tactic, not a strategy. This bit is just a refresher.

Performance-based Pricing for SEO won't work

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:08:05 -0800

People love to come to me and say "I'll pay you $X if you get me the #1 spot for 'nude chicks'". Yeah, great. I'll jump right on that.

You can't price SEO, or any other internet marketing, or any other marketing, for that matter, based purely on performance. Oh, you can try. It sure simplifies things. Instead of having to think about stuff like brand, long tail keywords and team interaction, you can use a simple "sucks/doesn't suck" model.

It simplifies things. And it's a crock. Here's why performance-based pricing doesn't work for SEO, or most other marketing:

You won't give me 100% control

I won't even consider performance-based SEO without 100% control of the web site. That's 100%. Of everything. The shopping cart, the content management system, hosting, content, design and layout.

Think about it: SEO depends on onsite optimization, link building, trust and other factors.

I can't optimize your site if your development team refuses to make 1/2 my changes.

I can't build links if you won't let me post quality content.

And I can't build your TrustRank if your server is supporting DDOS attacks against Twitter. And I can't deal with that if I can't get into your server.

If I don't have 100% control, I won't take 100% responsibility for SEO results. No smart SEO will accept performance-based pricing without 100% control. And you won't give it to me, unless you stared at the sun too long as a child.

Chasing one keyword or set of keywords is stupid

This only applies to the "I'll pay you X when I rank Y" model. There are other performance-based models, which also suck. I'll get to those in a minute.

Trying to rank for That One Keyword is fun. But it's a terrible disservice to your company. If you pay attention to search visibility first and keywords second, you'll get better results:

You'll move up in the rankings for lots of 'long tail' keywords - longer, less-competitive phrases.
Those longer phrases, combined, will almost always generate more traffic, sooner, than any one super-competitive keyword.
Those longer phrases will also bring you visitors with better, more focused intent. They're later in the buying cycle, or more interested in additional information, or seriously weighing their voting options.

Also, rankings have become very difficult to measure. With the rise of personalized search results, two people can see two different rankings for the same term, on the same day, in the same city. Whose ranking is 'right'?

Even worse, paying me for rankings just encourages me to be naughty. If you're going to pay me $100,000 after 90 days in the #1 position for "bicycles", then all I have to do is keep you there for 90 days. I can invest $40,000 in brokered links and some parasite hosting and use a few other dirty tricks. Bam. You get your rankings.

And bam, the moment your check clears, I take down the links and parasite pages to save some money. You plunge out of the rankings. Buh-bye.

Finally, paying for rankings encourages poor marketing practices. It tilts your entire strategy away from great storytelling and smart site development, towards "how many times can I repeat 'diapers' on this page?".

So, what's the right move? Not paying me for rankings.

Paying for traffic fails twice

Next option: You can pay me for every visit you get from organic search.

But it's prone to the same short-term thinking that kills the pay-for-rankings model. If I do SEO now, you'll see much of the boost months from now. That gives me very little incentive to work based on the traffic I generate, because even on a 12-month contract, I'll basically get paid for 9 months' work.

You can set up a contract that promises to pay me months after we stop working together. But after a few rough experiences there, I trust your company about as far as I can lob a 747.

The moment traffic really tops out, you'll realize you're paying me a ton of money. Your boss won't care that it's earning you 3x that much. All she'll care about is that line item. I'll become a gnawing annoyance in her belly, until she either rips up the contract or has me run over by a street sweeper.

Note I said your company. I trust you. But a year from now, when you leave, I'll end up arguing with some shyster thinks his law degree from Billy Bob's Online Law School gives him the right to tear the contract up, one niblet at a time.

But attribution is what really kills pay-for-traffic. You can pay me for every click over NN clicks from organic search results. That probably means you'll end up paying me for a lot of clicks I didn't generate, and missing a lot of clicks I did. It's very difficult to precisely attribute clicks to specific efforts. Since the pay-for-traffic model depends on that precision, it's an epic fail.

I do think this model has promise. Companies like Enquisite offering better and better measurement tools and pricing systems. At some point, if everyone decides to play nice, this system could be a fantastic way to price out contracts.

You're not paying for a ranking, or traffic...

...You're paying for a result, and a relationship. You're for:

Education: You're going to learn a lot. Unless you clap your hands over your ears and yell "lalalalalala". That won't show up in traffic or rankings for a long time. But it's still a huge benefit, and you're gonna pay for it.
Expertise: Guess what? I've spent 14 years learning SEO stuff. It's really hard. And you can't pay for that by tipping me 10% for a high ranking.
Agility: One week rankings matter to you. The next week, some jerk posts a negative review of your company on a forum and it starts ranking #2 for your company name. D'oh. You need me to shift gears, fast, and help with the new challenge. Hate to tell you, but that kind of agility costs money - it requires a multi-talented team. If you want me to charge less, I can replace my team with guys like this.
Safeguarding your brand: You want top rankings, but you also want to not be perceived as the biggest butthole on the internet. That, too, makes our work harder. But you can't measure it.
Results: When I say 'results' I mean an outcome that grows your business. Sometimes that's straight-up sales or leads. More often it's that, plus phone calls, plus other stuff that you can't precisely measure. Nor will you ever be able to. Sorry. You won't.
Relationship: You're paying for trust. #3 in this list only becomes a huge problem if you don't trust me. If you don't trust me, don't work with me. Please. I'm begging you. Clients who don't trust you are like psycho girlfriends/boyfriends: I shudder every time the phone rings.

What really works

The best models I've seen work one of three ways:

Retainer-based. Not always popular with clients, but provides the most flexibility to your agency. You pay a flat fee each month. They work their butts off and report back every week/month. Repeat. If they suck, you fire them later on.

Flat fee-based. Pay someone a flat fee for a super-deep one-time review and recommendations for your site. Then you either make the changes on your own or pay someone else to make those changes. This limits long term results a bit, since there's no steady effort. But it also limits your risk. If you're an in-house SEO, it's a great option.

Percentage of revenue or pay per lead. This can work. It's another performance approach but it's tied directly to the company, not rankings. But I'll only do it with 100% control of the site and marketing. Other internet marketing geeks may be more flexible. I'm not.

Compromise is best

I've also seen a mix of all three models, plus performance incentives, work best. For example: Pay a retainer, plus a bonus if X happens. Or pay a retainer plus a percentage of sales. Or something similar.

I do see systems like Enquisite's, that provide a baseline for SEO pricing, as being essential in the next generation of SEO campaign pricing. No, you can't use performance-based pricing as the long-term benchmark. But you can use it to figure out what your work should cost.

Whatever you do, build a model that'll reward great performance while also giving your SEO pro an incentive to make an effort right now.

OK, you may leave your hate mail, comments about what a whiner I am, etc. below. Or blame Oilman for inspiring my post with his.

Related stuff, things to do

What do I have to do to get you to follow me on Twitter? C'mon...
Read my review of Network Solutions' great "guaranteed rankings" SEO program. And by "great" I mean "evil".
Or, give yesterday's usability post, 22 Things you don't know about your customers, a look.
You can come tell me what a jerk I am in person at SES, Tuesday-Thursday of this week.

22 Things You Don't Know About Your Customers

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:33:03 -0800

There are things you don't know about your customers. It's not you, it's them. But you need to figure it out. Here are some hard lessons I've learned over the years - they apply to usability, pet peeves and other fun stuff. Learn these and you'll have more, happier customers/visitors/readers/fans:

1. Reading onscreen is hard, for everyone

The most basic principle of usability: It's hard for folks to read online. Much harder than reading in print. Remember this. Burn it into your brain. Small typefaces, weird page layouts and odd color schemes may seem great, but they're bound to hurt your business in the long run.

2. They like short paragraphs.

Oldest rule of marketing, from way back when we printed on paper and used mail and stuff: Write no more than 4-5 lines in a paragraph. Read My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising (Advertising Age Classics Library) to learn just how little the rules have changed.

3. They like short lines

Reading onscreen is hard. The typical person can best read 10-20 words per line. No more. If you're using microscopic fonts to fit every word possible on a line, change your ways.

4. They like wide line spacing and nice margins

Also know as 'leading', wide line spacing makes text easier to read. Margins shorten the lines so that you get fewer words per line (see above).

Folks actually read faster when line spacing is really tight, but they retain and comprehend less. A fantastic piece of research by the University of Wichita proves it.

5. They like dark text on a light background

We are trained to read dark text on a light background. It's what we're used to. So this:

The quick brown fox sprayed the lazy dog with mace.

Is easier to read than this:

The quick brown fox sprayed the lazy dog with mace.

The dark background really jumps out at you, but make it into a whole page and it starts to give you a headache.

Do you hate your audience? No? Then go with dark text on a light background.

6. They don't mind scrolling up-and-down

With those nifty mouse wheels, folks stopped getting unhappy about scrolling - it's no longer a usability issue, unless you create a 5000 word page or some silliness. You don't have to make a home page, or any other page of your web site, fit in a single window. Long pages are OK!

7. Lists make their lives easier

You can write a list in a paragraph, so that colors look like red, green, blue.

Or, you can write a list in a list, so that colors look like:

Red;
Green;
Blue.

Your audience wants the latter.

8. They browse in an F-shape

Read Jacob Nielsen's excellent article about the f-shape browsing pattern: Click here.

Put the most important stuff in the critical points of that F-shape, and you'll get better results.

Commercial Interlude: Learn more stuff like this in my SEO Copywriting e-book

9. They can't remember your web address

Seriously. No one ever remembers a web address. Oh, sure, if you're 'nike.com' or 'cnn.com', they do. But if you're 'portentinteractive.com' or 'conversationmarketing.com', good luck with that.

Give people plenty of ways to subscribe, bookmark or otherwise remember you. And reserve different permutations on your web address, to protect your brand.

10. They don't want to log in

Don't make them log in to check out. Let 'em just click 'check out'. By all means, give them the option to save their information and create an account. At the end of the checkout process. At that point, the warm fuzzy feeling any consumer gets from burning hard-earned cash is enough to get them to trust you.

11. They don't even want to think they have to log in

I know what you're thinking: "Oh, fine, I'll just put a login form on the left, and then put a tiny little button on the right that says you can check in as a guest."

No. This:

Tells me, the customer, "You are not part of our exclusive club. Click 'continue' and buy, but you are a loser."

In all seriousness, customers don't trust the internet. Never mind that they're 10x more likely to get their credit card stolen in a restaurant. They see the web as a massive interconnected den of thieves. If you even imply you're going to save their information, their trust is lost. Don't do it.

12. They don't even want a tiny hint or implication that at some point in the future they might have to log in

Just let them check out. For the love of all that's holy and good in the universe. Can we just drop it?

13. They don't want an 'experience'

In the immortal words of Jakob Nielsen: "Most people just want to get in, get it and get out."

Adding dynamic "web 2.0 stuff" (shudder) just because the other guy has it is foolish. Anything that makes me click twice instead of once is going to impress me the first time, and then alienate me after that. Examples include:

Drag-and-drop shopping carts. Clicking is easier.
Home page preloads. Clicking 'skip intro' is still extra work.
Fly-in, fly-out or slow fade-in, fade-out effects for product zoom images and such. Every time you do that, you make the customer wait. Why?

Customers and visitors don't want an experience. They want service. Only designers and geeks like me equate a great product/service with clever use of javascript libraries. The other 99% of the population wants to get in, get it, and get out.

Don't take my word for it. Look at the web site of one of the ultimate design companies: Apple.com. See any special effects?

14. They do want your newsletter

Hard to believe after all the spam hysteria, but a sizable chunk of your audience still wants to receive a newsletter. So make it easy for them to find it.

I was one of the worst offenders in this department. On our corporate site, we had a little e-mail icon, buried 1/3 of the way down the page, for our newsletter signup.

We made a very simple change, adding a signup form on every page next to the icon, and we've seen a lift in signups just a week later:

15. They don't care how clever you are

If you can say "Ian Lurie arrested in drunken rampage", just say it. Don't say "Pugnacious Portent Prez Pegged by Police". The former tells me what's going on. The latter is funny but unhelpful.

16. They aren't enticed by mystery

Your online audience is enticed by clarity, a cool product, a great story and such. They're not enticed by the mystery of it all.

So a headline like "Great abs!" isn't as helpful as "10 exercises to get great abs". And "All Wired Up" is utterly worthless compared to "Wired Magazine Has A Great Year".

One last interlude: I gotta eat, right?

17. They get lost a lot

It's easy for a site visitor to get lost. A broken link here, a missing button there, and wham, they're frustrated and confused.

Have a user-friendly 404 error page, a good onsite search tool and really clear navigation. Then review the onsite search data and the 404 errors, and see what they tell you about what your customers want but aren't getting.

18. They aren't using cell phones. Yet.

If you do business in North America, chances are your customers aren't browsing your site using a cell phone. Even this blog, which has more than its share of geek visitors, gets few mobile views:

Plan for mobile, by all means. Learn how to create a mobile style sheet. But don't derail an entire project, or increase the cost 100%, just to be mobile-compatible.

19. They don't search for your name

Your audience doesn't know who you are. They aren't searching for your name. They're searching based on a question, and they'll find you if you can pose the right answer. So, while ranking #1 for your company name is great, it probably won't help your bottom line.

20. They still use Internet Explorer

Not everyone understands that Firefox is the Risen Savior just yet. Most of your audience is probably using Internet Explorer:

And a lot of them are still using (choke) Internet Explorer 6:

Design, develop and plan accordingly.

21. They're buying nice monitors (and computers)

On the other hand, most of your audience is upgrading their computer's graphics capabilities. You can safely design a page that's 900 pixels wide:

Be sure to check your own site stats before you make a change.

22. They need to want

People buy what they want, not what they need. We all need car insurance. We all want iPhones or other shiny things.

I don't know about you, but I don't get the same happy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I consider my next car insurance payment as when I contemplate a new HTC Hero.

We can bemoan this, or go with it. Customers need to want. A truly great marketer explains why they want what they need.

I am borrowing the needs and wants principle from some brilliant marketer whose name I cannot find or recall. I'm not smart enough to come up with it on my own.

Here's the thing...

This list always gets longer. Look at your analytics report. Learn from the way your audience responds to what you change on your site. Use your brain, and never stop questioning why things are happening the way they're happening.

And feel free to add to this list, below.

Other stuff to do

Follow me on Twitter
Don't rely too much on the marketing plan.
Work on your marketing copywriting.
Learn 10 questions to ask a social media 'expert'.
Subscribe to this blog, even.
Download my free e-book on social media monitoring using Google Reader.

Just stop. OK?

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:30:05 -0800

Everyone does lists of things you should do. In my continuing quest to turn all sanity on its head, here's a random list of things that should be stopped:

Stop using automated Twitter follow tools. They don't make you an internet marketing genius.
Dump the auto-blog content generator. You sound like a moron.
Stop telling the whole world about your latest trick for building links. Because it just pisses me off.
Oh, god, don't send any more unsolicited e-mails. If I have to even tell you this, you should be forced to watch back to back Three's Company episodes for the next 4 months.
Stop using Michael Jackson hashtags in a desperate, Twitter-driven cry for attention. You're just embarrassing yourself.
Get rid of that link-swapping directory software you set up in 2002. Google found it. It's making your brand look like a heap of bat dung.
Stop taking pride in your lack of tech literacy. You know who you are, Mr./Ms. CEO - making your secretary print your e-mail out is not going to help your career.
Leave your $13, 250,000-person e-mail list behind. You're creating more spam complaints than a Monty Python sketch.
Please. PLEASE stop sending me invites for every Facebook game, event, contest, find-my-relatives tool or other sick cyberstalking device disguised as a 'fun distraction'. I hate them all.
Don't use any more grainy, low-quality product photos on your site. That's not an artistic statement - it's a tragedy.
Stop comparing internet marketing to video games. That is soooo annoying.
Let go of the idea that good marketing will make up for a lousy product.
End your lowly plagiarizing. It is not OK. It never has been. It never will be. Do it, and I will smite thee.
Don't tell me I should give you my expertise for free. I'm ornery, and won't do it.
Stop talking on your cell phone in the airport restroom. It's gross. And next time you do it I'm going to snap a photo and put it on this blog.
Stop treating your customers like they're stupid. They're distracted, stressed, and may not know your product inside and out like you do. But they're not dumb.
Stop taking yourself and your brand so damned seriously. You'd be amazed what a little humor and humility will do for your public image.
Give up on click arbitrage. You're not Jeremy Schoemaker - you're going to end up $5000 in the hole.
Stop generalizing. If you tell me one more time that the key to SEO is great content that attracts links, I'm going to charge the stage. You know who you are. :)
STOP telling me that everything's been hunky-dory in your business while the economy spiraled into the runway at 800 miles per hour. You're soooo lying.
Stop pretending internet marketing is easy. It's not, and a 5-day course or a DVD or even a Dummies Book will get you started, but not make you an expert.

Pant pant pant. OK, I'm done.

13 ways to generate customer hate
The internet marketing list: 59 things you should be doing but probably aren't
Bad chicken and careless marketing

5 Reasons Your Marketing Plan Will Fail

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:38:15 -0800

Marketing plans are to 21st century marketing what the F-22 is to 21st century warfare: Cool and shiny-looking, but pricey and unhelpful.

Your carefully-prepared 12-month marketing plan will fail. Here's why:

It assumes a static situation. You can't create a marketing plan that looks 12 months out and accounts for even a fraction of the possible changes in your audience. So you make assumptions based on right now. Which just passed you by - here that? Whoosh. There goes another one...
It assumes you're selling to computers. You grind the demographic data, conduct focus groups and then take the oh-so-spontaneous answers you get as gospel. Then you're surprised when consumers in the real world look at you like you're insane. People aren't computers. You can't predict how one person will behave based on another's answer. Especially when you get that answer by bribing them with free sandwiches and coffee.
You're planning to interrupt. Your marketing plan says you'll spend $nn on pay per click marketing, $nn on banner ads, another $nnnn on e-mail, and maybe $nnnnnnnnnn on print advertising. Then you're gonna hope folks see you and divert their attention. That worked in 1968. It doesn't work now. Now, you need to be there just when someone decides they need that shiny widget. Then you have to sell them on your particular version of that shiny widget.
The plan smacks of desperation. See the previous. You wrote your plan based on the fact that you need your customers. Only they don't care. You need to be there when they need you, instead.
You haven't checked your premises. You plan to spend $x to make 3 times $x. What if you make 10 times $x? 2 times $x? You haven't checked your premises because you can't yet. By nature, a marketing plan is self-defeating. The moment you launch it, it will affect your audience, throwing your assumptions all over the map.

Instead of a plan, try a playbook. Playbooks give you steps to take in different situations: "If X happens, we'll go to Y." Write a playbook that accounts for checking data, re-evaluating results and going where consumers take you, instead of plunking down $400,000 on a monstrosity of a web site and then ending up stuck on a one-way road to the unemployment line.

For design, focus groups suck
15 Principles of Internet Marketing
Integrated marketing to clever monkeys

Free Video Site Reviews: May require therapy

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:52:32 -0800

A long while ago, I did a series of free site reviews. I stopped, to be honest, for three reasons:

I got sick of writing free site reviews. It wasn't that much fun for me.
I got spammed with thousands of sites that either made me retch or blush.
In the end, I was left with that empty feeling you usually get after eating 2 pounds of chocolate and realize it was crappy chocolate.

So this time, I'm going to do things differently. Fill out the form below and I'll check out your site for free, then do a 5-10 minute video review.

I do not guarantee I'll do a review. If I do one, I'll notify you before the video goes live.

I'll be nice, but I'll be very honest. Once I do the review, it's live, and it ain't going down. You can hire a therapist, but if you hire a lawyer I'll just do 50 more reviews making fun of your color selections.

You have been warned. The brave may submit here:

Speaking at SES San Jose

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:15:04 -0800

I'll be doing a site clinic at SES San Jose: 10-11AM on Tuesday, August 11th.

Here's the official spiel:

The Curmudgeon's Web Copywriting Clinic

SEO, PPC, social media: You work hard to build traffic. But is your
site's copywriting driving away visitors? Get your site's copy
reviewed for:

- Online readability
- Call to action
- Clarity & structure
- SEO-friendliness

A few small changes can help you keep more visitors, and turn them
into customers. Bring your URL by the booth and have your page
reviewed by Ian Lurie, CMC (Chief Marketing Curmudgeon) at Portent
Interactive.

So get over to the booth and keep me busy!!!!

Google Safebrowsing Says One Malware Threat is... Google?!

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:25:49 -0800

Really, what else can I say?

The End of SEO

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:18:14 -0800

HAH. Bet THAT got your attention.

No, I'm not actually saying SEO is dying, or SEO is going away, or that SEOs are crooks. I'm an SEO. Some of my best friends are SEOs...

But the definition of SEO is changing. The latest YaBing news will probably accelerate that change. And when the dust settles, or at least starts drifting in a different direction, SEO will no longer be a standalone craft.

Instead, SEO will become about deriving value from search visits to a web site. And that will make SEO a full-on marketing discipline. Here's why:

Rankings are dying

Optimizing for a specific keyword and ranking is an even dumber strategy now than it was a year ago. With personalized search, behavior tracking and other fine things, the search engines are constantly tweaking and adjusting which sites go where.

Focus on the keyword rankings and you'll lose your mind, as well as your business.

What can SEOs focus on, then?

Traffic matters

Instead, watch your organic search traffic (traffic from unpaid search results). Is it going up? Great! Your SEO is working. Is it going down? Bummer. Your SEO hasn't kicked in yet.

So, SEOs aren't in the rankings business any more. We're in the traffic business.

But quality matters more

'More traffic' is not a business goal. So search traffic quality is more important than quantity.

'Quality' is determined by search traffic's direct contribution to the growth of the business. Nothing else matters.

SEOs aren't in the traffic business, either. We're in the business growth business. Ask any competent SEO and I'll bet they have at least one story of clients asking about bottom-line results rather than rankings. If someone's going to shell out cash for your services, they want to know the work's paying off, directly, for them.

Traffic will shrink

I've talked about the big shift from index to aggregator that most search engines are making.

That's going to reduce traffic. It won't reduce attention, though.

Clickability will rule

So, SEOs are going to be caught up in a battle not just for first-page real estate, but also for clicks. Our ability to craft search listings that grab attention, answer questions and make searchers click is as valuable as our ability to increase traffic.

And, our ability to get the right clicks (see 'quality', above) will become more important, because you can't write a different search snippet for every search query.

OK, you can, but I'll not talk about such black hattery here.

Conversion will rule

If you do a fantastic job of search engine optimization but the web site is a pile of steaming poop, you'll still end up fired.

No conversions = no quality
No quality = no benefit
No benefit = you're FIRED

SEOs must start learning about conversion optimization and usability. We have to be able to make query-focused recommendations that improve a page's conversion rate among searchers.

SEOs must become marketers

In short, SEOs have to become marketers. We have to learn to help companies derive real, bottom-line value from SEO. If we can't do that, I may someday write about the end of SEO and mean it.

SEO 101: What's a Title Tag?

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:24:02 -0800

I'm spending today trying not to spontaneously combust. Assuming I don't vanish with a puff of smoke and a FOOMP, this will be a quick primer on title tags.

In case you don't know: In web terms, the 'title tag' is a hidden bit of code on your page. It's typically visible to the public in two places.

First, in the title bar of your web browser:

And second, as the headline of most search snippets on search results pages:

As the headline of a search snippet, the title tag is the ultimate arbiter of clickability. A good title tag will get your search ranking clicked. A bad one will likely drive away potential visitors.

But the title tag is also the #1 onpage search ranking factor. More on that, after I do a quick HTML dissection (ew):

The Bones and Guts and Stuff

If you click 'View' and then 'Page Source' in Firefox, or View >> Source in Internet Explorer, you'll see what the title tag looks like when the skin's off the skeleton:

That's it - what all the fuss is about. See how the text matches the search snippet and title bar text, above?

Edit the stuff between '<title>' and '</title>' and you change what appears in the search engines, as well as the title bar.

Why You Should Care

Search engines rank pages, not web sites. At the top of the hierarchy that they use to do that ranking sits the title tag.

The title tag is the single most powerful ranking factor over which you have control. If you don't optimize your title tags, don't bother optimizing your site.

OK, that's a little extreme, but launching an SEO campaign without title tag optimization is a bit like launching a sailboat without sails. You're not going to get very far.

What You Should Do

Armed with this knowledge, you can now march down the hall to your web dude (or dudette) and request that:

The target phrase go first in the title tag. If I'm optimizing for "Buckets", then "Buckets: All shapes and colors at bucketorama" is good. "Bucketorama: All kinds of buckets" is bad.
By default, your shopping cart software put the product name first in all title tags, then the category name, then the brand.
Your content management system (CMS) and/or shopping cart software let you customize title tags product by product, as desired. The title tag must be independent of the page's visible headline:
Editing title tags on your site take less than 10 minutes per page (please lord).
There's a regular weekly time (minimum) scheduled for those edits.

That last item is really important: As your pages rise and fall in the rankings for different phrases, you'll likely want to tweak your titles a bit, adding and removing words for better clickability or rankings. Don't let someone tell you you can edit those tags 'just this once'.

That's it! Amazing how that one little tag can have such an impact...

Opinions Please

If this was too elementary, let me know and I won't write this kind of stuff. If it was helpful, let me know, too.

Boost my fragile ego: Follow me on Twitter.

This post is not about the Yahoo/Microsoft Merger

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:17:59 -0800

'nuff said.

1 Keyword Metric You're Forgetting: True competition

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:57:49 -0800

In keyword research, we all start with the standards: Google's keyword tool, Wordze or Wordtracker or Trellian, and maybe Bing's keyword research tool.

It's a mistake

If you build your keyword list based purely on objective numbers, you're going to fail. A lot. You're forgetting one critical factor: True competition.

You must measure true competition

You can easily find out how many other pages rank in, say, Google. Just do a search and look at the "...out of NNN results for [search term here]":

Wow. 2,000,000 competitors. That's one hot term. It looks very competitive.

But just how hard will it really be to claw your way into the top 10?

If it's purely a numbers game, then getting a top ranking for 'Redline Bicycles' with its 2 million competing pages will be far harder than getting a top ranking for, say, 'groomsmen gifts', which only has 872,000 competitors.

But the numbers don't tell the whole story. You need to look at a few other things:

Who's optimizing?

How many of the top 10-50 sites bear the hallmarks of a serious onsite SEO effort? For a quick glance, check these factors:

Keyword in title tags.
Amount of content on the ranking page.
Freshness of content.
Overall content on the site.

In the top 20 Redline search results, I find at least 9 sites that have non-optimized title tags, almost no text content and/or at least 1-2 major SEO deal breakers. If I can beat them, I can probably find my way into the top 10.

In the top 20 'groomsmen gifts' results, on the other hand, everyone's optimizing like their lives depend on it. Every site has articles, tons of content and repeats the keyphrase like a parrot after 4 cups of coffee.

In spite of the numbers, 'Redline bicycles' is probably the easier term.

Who's got links?

How many quality links do the top 10-20 sites have?

Again, let's look at our two test phrases.

The #3 result for Redline has 5 incoming links. 5. The #5 result has 1 external link to the ranking page (according to SEOMOZ's Linkscape). These sites are vulnerable, as they have very little authority for this phrase.

The worst of the top 10 sites for groomsmen gifts, on the other hand, has 971 links from 100+ unique, fully-qualified domains. Yikes.

Again, 'Redline bicycles' is far easier.

Who's spamming social media?

One last check: How much are folks spamming the hell out of social media outlets like Twitter? While this won't do too much, SEO-wise, I find social media spam to be an excellent indicator of misguided desperation.

Redline bicycles: No results in Twitter search.

Groomsmen gifts: One spammy tweet after another.

Again, groomsmen gifts looks like a miserable uphill slog.

Competition is more than numbers

It's like my cycling coach used to say: If everyone in the race sucks, it doesn't matter how big the field is.

In keyword research, competition is about a lot more than the numbers. Take the extra time to do a little research and you may find some great niche opportunities you'd never have thought existed.

Yeah, I'm a hypocrite. As much as I argue SEO isn't about keywords any more, you still have to dig through and build that keyword list.

10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media 'Expert'

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:12:01 -0800

If you know more than 5 people, chances are you now know someone who declares themselves a social media expert. How can you tell if someone's claim of expertise is legit? Here's my quick quiz. Ask each question and take the appropriate action:

1: Do you have a blog?

If the expert answers 'no', that may be OK. Follow up with something like 'Oh, you're using Posterous instead?'. If they look at you blankly, end the meeting there. No sense wasting your time.

If the expert answers 'yes', get the address and go look. If they've been blogging for less than 2-3 years, and there's no explanation like "I had to move my blog", again, end the meeting.

Any social media expert has been somehow participating in the conversation for a long time.

2: When did you start in social media?

"6 months ago". Yeah. OK. Bye.

"2 years ago". Hey, not bad. Worth a chat.

"In 1992". Er. Um. They'd better be referencing BBSes and Usenet.

3: What is social media?

"Blogging and Twitter and stuff". Excuse yourself for a bathroom break and don't come back.

"All of the conversations going on between people and people and businesses and such online". Not bad.

"A trendy term to describe a new kind of mass media". Totally acceptable.

4: What's a social media campaign?

"Voting something to the front page of Digg using my proxy server and 35 computers". Flee the scene, and get to a minimum safe distance as soon as possible. The Digg brigade may be on its way. Whatever you do, don't hire them. While this is a valid tactic (I guess), it's not a campaign. Nor does it generate long term results in most cases.

"Developing a great message and then reaching out to people, while giving them an incentive to 'pass it on'". Yeah, OK, keep 'em around.

"I have this great software that will put a link to your site on 21,000 forums and 10,000 blogs...". Push them down the garbage chute. Don't be seen with them in public.

5: How do you monitor social media for a client?

"Huh?" Hopefully your next step is obvious.

"Google alerts". Not bad, but wait and see if they add in stuff like subscribing to Twitter searches and the like.

"I use a 3rd party tool". Fine, but make sure they do more than plug in some keywords and wait for e-mails. A human being needs to review what the tool reports or its worthless.

6: How do you measure ROI?

"Oh, shut up". Perfectly OK, especially if the expert turns purple for a moment first. They're just sick of hearing this question, which means they've been around the block a few times.

"It's complicated, but here's a high-level view...". Nice!!!

"I track clicks from Twitter". Nope, sorry.

7: How do you build an audience?

"I auto-follow 20,000 people on Twitter". If you're OK with it, kick them in the groin for me. If not, nod politely and move on.

"I follow interesting, relevant people on Twitter, comment on relevant blog posts and try to get into the conversation". Home run. Try not to weep with joy.

"We need to figure out the campaign first". Good answer. Give them a hypothetical campaign to be sure, but clearly you're on the right track.

8: Do you offer a guarantee?

"Yes, I'll get you 1000 links and 20,000 clicks". See number 7, first action.

"Yes, that I'll work my butt off for you". I like it.

"No, because we're marketing to people, and it's hard to say what they'll like/not like, or what might happen in the world that will affect behavior". Also good.

9: How did you learn all this stuff?

"Oh, I read this book I bought from Amazon.com". Wargh. By the time that book went to print it was out of date. No go.

"I'm always learning". Good answer.

"I read a lot of blogs, and try to use as many different tools as I can". Also good.

"I go to conferences". Yeahhhhhh. Might be OK. Answers to the other 9 questions should tell you.

10: How does social media impact SEO?

"It doesn't". Slap them and tell 'em that's from Ian.

"It builds links". That's half the answer.

"It builds relationships that turn into links later". HIRE THEM NOW.

Bonus question: How often do you write?

"I hate writing". Cough.

"Oh, I try to but I don't have much time". Cough. Cough.

"Every day". DING DING DING. A winner!

There you go. An instant social media expert evaluator. Sort of like a Cylon Detector, but hopefully more effective.

By the way, print a copy of this. If you get word-for-word answers, you might think twice.

Yes, I hate the phrase social media. No reason to beat that dead horse any more.

A little much-needed perspective

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:38:03 -0800

10 Ways Internet Marketing is Like World of Warcraft

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:45:08 -0800

Meet Dappa. He's my World of Warcraft (WoW) character.

He's sadly neglected these days, but I've played World of Warcraft a fair bit, and notice some startling similarities to internet marketing:

It's very hard to walk away

I'm not one of those guys who has to wear adult diapers because I spent 12 hours welded to my computer, but WoW is definitely addictive. Internet marketing is pretty hard to leave alone, too, and it'll suck you in.

The quests are never-ending

Part of my love-hate relationship with World of Warcraft is the fact that you're never, ever, ever, done. Just when you finish a quest for some whiny gnome, his boss comes up with 10 more things for you to do. I think the WoW creators stole that from internet marketing. Ever had a site 100% perfectly optimized for search? Didn't think so.

Thar be doo-doo heads

Walk around in the World of Warcraft long enough, and you meet someone who tries to steal from you, backstab you, fling you off a cliff or otherwise ruin your day. The internet seems to be a training ground for those folks. Let it go. Or hit him with your +44 Stick of Ruination.

The basic rules don't change

WoW is based on a long-standing tradition of role playing, video games and humanity's never-ending obsession with blowing stuff up. But the basics are still the same: Get stuff. Sell stuff. Use gold to buy better weapons, so you can kill more bad (or good) guys and get more stuff, so you can sell more stuff... You get the idea.

Add an 'internet' in front of 'marketing' and it's still marketing. The rules have. not. changed. No matter how hard you try to argue it. It's still about a refined message that brings you the right customers just when they need what you're providing.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should

If you want to make tons of money in WoW, you can always go pay someone real-world dollars. Then they'll send you 40,000 gold pieces in WoW, and you can go on a shopping spree. Woo hoo! Of course, that person will likely then steal your personal information and sell it to the highest bidder. Then you'll have to explain why 10 charges from Lucille's Happy Adult Boutique.

You can also pay someone to create 50,000 links to your web site, thereby gaining a temporary SEO advantage. But those links will probably be from sites like Lucille's Happy Adult Boutique. And eventually, that'll catch up with you in the rankings.

Exercise some judgment.

There's always someone better

Just when you think you're the toughest warlock in the game, you get bitten in half by a horrific monster summoned by the other toughest warlock in the game.

Humility is a good idea in WoW, and in internet marketing. There's always someone better. It pays to be ready to learn.

Organizations are fickle

WoW has all sorts of clans, factions, guilds and such. You can get friendly with them and they'll provide you goodies. You can also make them really, really angry at you, to the point where they'll pincushion you with arrows on sight.

But they're downright consistent compared to the clients, vendors and influencers who drive internet marketing. Look at me - I've got at least 4-5 voices in my head at any one time. You're going to get fired, hired, respected, maligned, ranked #1, then banned, etc. ad nauseum. Get used to the ride.

Knowing your limits is good

When I was around 40th level, I decided to try to gain levels faster by pursuing quests that were 4-5 levels higher. One of them was hunting this gorilla guy, King Mukla. I found him on an island. He looked like a cute little gorilla. I did the natural thing and tried to light him on fire.

Then I realized he looked little because he was about 400 yards away. He pancaked me, did a jig on my internal organs, and then left.

That's just a game. As an internet marketer you're dealing with real people, real businesses and real money. Don't get in over your head. Understand your limitations and don't be afraid to say "I don't know".

Don't just conquer: Explore

Part of what keeps me playing World of Warcraft is the joy of finding new places. Yes, the hacking and slaying is fun. But exploration keeps things interesting, and rounds out your experience.

You may master, say, pay-per-click marketing for real estate agents. Keep exploring internet marketing. Find the new stuff. I've got a list of sites where I learn a lot, every day. Make your own.

Breaks are good

Going back to #1: Unless you really like your butt slowly growing to match the shape of your favorite video gaming chair, I suggest balancing your WoW career with things like exercise and socializing with real people. Bathing is also good.

When I started out in internet marketing, I dedicated 100% of my professional time to the internet. I quickly learned I was getting tunnel vision. Spending some time learning about traditional marketing and (gasp) refining my writing skills was far more helpful. So were things like taking a few minutes to play hide-and-seek with my kids, or go for a walk, or shoot my employees with Nerf guns.

Now my employees try to shoot me with the same guns, but they always seem to miss. Right, Evan?

There you have it. I could find another 100 ways they match but I'll spare you. Coming soon: Internet Marketing Machinima.

Related/recent posts

10 ways internet marketing is like a ruptured disc
9 twitter myths that make me unfollow
Think for yourself: A geek's guide to problem solving
SyFy? Sigh Fie? Cy Figh? 'Branding' Gone Wrong

Sites Where I Learn Stuff

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:19:35 -0800

I have a few sites I go to day-in and day-out. They're well-written, informative as heck, and a great source of inspiration.

Here they are:

Smashing Magazine. No surprise. The folks at Smashing Magazine publish one great, inspirational post after another. If you're a designer, developer or web marketer you want to subscribe and check them out daily.
Nettuts+. I recently discovered Nettuts+ and am addicted. The tutorials are detailed and cover everything from PHP frameworks to Flash.
Noupe is another great tutorial site. I could probably spend all day just reading some of these...
Information Aesthetics. A collection of fantastic infographics. If you're a datageek, it's like Disneyland.
Shoemoney is one of the most successful affiliate marketers on the planet. Read his stuff.
SEOMoz Blog. Lotsa great SEO information, plus the occasional dust-up between Michael Martinez and Rand Fishkin.
Wolf-Howl. Graywolf's blog is great when you need a healthy dose of skepticism about the major search engines' benevolence. A critical balance for any SEO.
High Rankings Advisor. Jill Whalen and her team have been in SEO even longer than me. Which I didn't think was possible. I'm just so damned old...
LifeHacker is one nerdy tip after another for organizing your life, souping up your computer or learning to fry eggs with a black sock. OK, I made that last one up. But you get the idea.
Gary Vaynerchuk's blog shows you just how much fun someone can have if they find their passion and a career online. I'm still lookin'...
Signal Vs. Noise. Yes, the guys at 37 Signals can sometimes seem obnoxious. And I admire that. Their genius for design, simplicity and usability make their blog mandatory.
ChrisBrogan.com is a second CopyBlogger for me. Tips on writing, social media and online marketing wisdom.
While I'm on the subject, CopyBlogger is where you get ideas and tips on becoming a better copywriter.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is always on my list. Because if you really love your country, you nag, nag, nag.
AdScam/The Horror!. George Parker tells it like it is in the ad industry, and then some.

What are your faves? Help me build my feed list...

And follow me on Twitter, will ya?

3 Ways to Measure Social Media ROI

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:51:13 -0800

It's very, very hard to measure social media in a way that credits it with all the great stuff it can do for an organization.

Sure, you can measure clicks from each social media outlet, and measure conversions from those clicks. But that's a tiny, tiny sliver of the real story.

Here are three metrics I use to measure social media. Two of them require work. But that's why we get paid, I believe.

1: Conversions

Track conversions, straight-up. If you run a Facebook campaign and get 500 new orders in 3 days, woo hoo! Your work paid off.

If you get 5 orders, though, does that mean the campaign flopped? Not necessarily. So before your boss fires you for running that damned campaign that cost him $0/click, check out the next metrics.

2: Ranked pages

Search engine reputation management is a turf war. The more positions you can occupy in the top 10 search results on your name or brand, the harder it is for a smear campaign to get traction.

Twitter and Facebook pages get crawled and ranked, just like any other page on the internet. Get those into the top 10 for your brand name, and you probably just grabbed 30% of the total available real estate on page 1.

Look at what the folks at momAgenda accomplished (OK, they had a little help from moi) and you'll see what I mean:

They have nothing to fear re: their reputation, but still, it's nice to have that kind of control.

Valuation: If you need to assign a dollar value, you'll have to create a scenario and model what would happen if someone's gripe hit the front page of Google. Conservatively, what would that cost your company? If you now hold 2 more spots on page 1, then you reduced that cost by 20%. Rough math, I know, but it's all we can use for this kind of hypothetical.

No ranked pages yet? On to the next statistic:

Links

99% of social media sites nofollow their links, so you won't get any direct link love for your labors.

However, other people visit your fan page, and see your Tweets. When they do, you acquire links. Here's one client's link profile after a major social media win:

See how the traffic falls back down, but links keep climbing? That link growth outlasts the burst of publicity a successful campaign gets you, every time. That's one reason social media and SEO are inseparable.

Valuation. Assigning a dollar value to this is even harder, though. What's a link really worth? I usually turn the argument on its head and ask, "What's a #1 ranking for [insert phrase here] worth?". Every link you add helps you get there. So while you can't assign a hard value, there's definitely a return there.

Other metrics

I could throw around terms like 'goodwill' and 'branding' but most CFOs don't want to hear about that stuff. Stick with the metrics above.

Any others I'm missing?

Headline Writing 101: Taught by TechCrunch

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:50:24 -0800

I've written about headlines before: A good headline can vitalize your entire page.

A bad headline puts your page in a coma.

Then there are the headlines that chop your page into small, bloody, fist-sized chunks and throw them into the ocean for hungry sharks to peck at.

And that, everyone, is what we're going to talk about today.

TechCrunch published an anonymous post today. I'm not going to link to it, because it doesn't deserve the juice. Nor am I going to pick apart the many problems in it - lots of other folks will do that.

Instead, I'm going to talk about Rule Number One of headline writing:

Thou Shalt Write Headlines That Relate To Your Story

The story in TechCrunch talks about why the government should regulate Google.

The headline is:

"The Time Has Come To Regulate Search Engine Marketing And SEO"

If you're an internet marketer, you see the problem. If not: Google is a search engine. SEO and Search Engine Marketing are service offered by people who don't have anything to do with Google.

It's a bit like saying that, because Dominos had employees blowing their noses on pizza, we'd better regulate the mozzarella cheese industry.

Thou Shalt Write Descriptive Headlines

A headline must accurately describe the story. 'Accurately' means that, if you write the headline on a blank sheet of paper, the reader can figure out exactly what they're going to read.

So, better headline would have been:

"The Time Has Come To Regulate Search Engines"

"Google is a big bad meanie" (dammit, I said I wouldn't critique the article)

Either one describes the article far more clearly.

Thou Shalt Resist Temptation

Why'd they write such an odd headline? It's not hard to guess: Linkbait. Google's unlikely to get their knickers in a twist about a rambling, poorly-written blog post (argh, there I go again).

SEOs, on the other hand, are guaranteed to start screaming if they read a headline implying we're evildoers.

So the editor wrote an inaccurate headline in the name of linkbait. Anger-bait, actually.

I wag my finger at you and say thou shalt resist the temptation to twist and bend your headlines in the name of traffic. A headline should be informative first, provocative second.

The moral of this story

Unfortunately, I can't say this story is an object lesson. TechCrunch has received more comments on that post (239) than any other post today. And the buzz around it is, well, buzzing.

So the moral may appear to be: "Screw with thine headlines, and riches will be yours".

Hold on a second, though. TechCrunch already has an audience of 9,999,999 lemmings (including me) hanging on their every word. They can afford to occasionally, uh, bend the truth a bit in their headlines.

You can't. You're still growing your audience. You're still building your business' online brand. Screw up like this and it could follow you around for a long time.

So write accurate, descriptive headlines.

Now, I'm going to go change the headline for this story to "Michael Arrington Wounded in Flying Piranha Rampage" and see how that does for generating traffic...

9 Twitter Myths That Make Me Unfollow

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:56:11 -0800

More hyped than Barack Obama, less understood than quantum mechanics... It's Twitter, folks! (applause)

I'm here to dispel a few myths. There are lots of other Twitter mythbusting posts out there, so I decided to put my own spin on it. If you buy into any of these myths, and demonstrate by inflicting your beliefs upon me, I will unfollow you so fast your Obama particles will travel back in time:

I care where you're eating right now.
Actually, I won't unfollow you for Tweeting that you're at the neighborhood deli. But it's just not something that'll change my life. Confine your Tweets to interesting links, news or funny/deep observations. Daily routine isn't necessary. Revised per @toddhooper and @mediafortemktg: I do care if it's a really great restaurant.

The world needs another Miracle System To Generate Money Online Without Lifting A Finger.
Send me a message selling one of those, and I'll lift a finger. Then I'll unfollow you.

Folks want to see your underwear/cleavage/other unmentionables in your avatar.
We don't. If we do, we'll ask, OK?

It's cute to follow/unfollow/follow/unfollow/follow someone.
I'll actually follow you back, if you do this. That way, I can find your house and yank your cable modem so hard it flies through the wall at relativistic speed, leaving only a distinct popping sound as air rushes in to replace it. It may seem like this is a neat tactic to boost your Twitter rank or whatever, but it's really just a great way to irritate people.

People want automated direct messages saying "Thanks for the follow! :) ;) :>" when they follow you.
No.

Once I sign up for Twitter, Good Things will happen.
I sympathize on this one. From what you hear on the media, Twitter will cure cancer, keep men from peeing on toilet seats and provide unlimited clean energy. Sadly, it's a lot of work to get even a little bit of benefit from Twitter. You need to build your audience over time, for that One Time - a crisis, a success, something else - you really need to speak to them all. Then it pays off.

Shameless plug:

People on Twitter don't care about spelling.
I just saw a Tweet that made me realize how much I do care about spelling. I unfollowed them. If you're using Twitter professionally, or if folks you work with are on Twitter, you want to act professionally too. Use a spell checker, at least.

If you set up a Twitter account, it means your brand/company/organization is cool.
Yeaaaaah, sorry. If you set up a Twitter account and send me cool information, or help fix my problem with your product, then you're cool.

"Autofollow 55,000 people on Twitter, and then spam them with product offers" is a good business plan.
Not unless you've invented a way to punch people in the face over the internet, and you're sending me a free trial.

OK, I'm done. What Twitter myths drive you crazy?

SyFy? Sigh Fie? Cy Figh? 'Branding' Gone Wrong

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:17:26 -0800

I'm no branding expert but the SciFi Channel's new brand feels to me like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. After she hit bottom.

When will CMOs understand that branding is not your name, or your logo? If you're a channel on my television, then your brand is your programming. When you go from FireFly and Battlestar Galactica to Warehouse 13 and Sand Serpents (WTH?), the prettiest logo and the pithiest name in the world isn't going to save you.

I just looked into 'Sand Serpents'. The summary (quoted from the SyFy web site) is: "Danger lurks beneath a platoon of American soldiers in the Afghan desert - giant man eating worms!". That DOES NOT HELP ME IMAGINE GREATER, guys.

Your brand is the sum total of your behavior, your audience's perception of you, and the quality of your product. That gets wrapped up in a pretty package called marketing, which induces potential fans to tear off the wrapping and take a look.

If your behavior is bad, your audience knows you're over, and your product is getting worse by the moment, using nicer wrapping paper won't help.

I had a whole three-page rant thought up about this. But this story tells itself...

Hopeton Hay Radio Interview

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:10:28 -0800

Elizabeth Marsten and I were interviewed by Hopeton Hay for his radio show, Economic Perspectives. You can download it and listen to it here:

[ economic perspectives interview 6.29.09 ]

The main topic: The book, Web Marketing All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies.

Two important notes:

Elizabeth and I wrote five of the sections of the book. The rest of the book was written by John Arnold (also the editor), Marty Dickinson and Michael Becker.
I wasn't actually talking through a huge wad of cotton. I just have to say that. Not sure what the hell was going on with my phone or the sound or whatever.

AUUUUGH: Social Media For Crisis Communications

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:39:06 -0800

I had a hard, hard lesson in crisis communications last week. Thursday evening our data center at Fisher Plaza went 'kerploop'. That's the short hand for "a perfect storm of stupid design, a fire and really bad luck took out all power to one of Seattle's primary data centers, shutting down two TV stations, a few radio stations, Authorize.net and several hundred other sites".

You can read my timeline here, or read the media's take on the whole mess here.

The crisis

Among those several hundred sites were 20-30 of our clients. Suddenly, we had no 'state of the art' data center, they had no web sites, we had no fast way to repoint them, and we had no idea when they'd be back. The world (my world, at least) was suddenly a very uncertain place.

So, we had a few choices: We could run in circles, screaming incoherently; we could hold our breaths; or we could help our clients get the word out.

I tried option 1 and 2 first, but after the first 2 hours, I was exhausted and oxygen-deprived, so I moved on to 3.

Social media to the rescue

Any client who had a presence on Facebook, Twitter or another social media portal could immediately let folks know:

And, the moment the site was back (26 excruciating hours later), they could again send an update:

Other clients were able to use Twitter and LinkedIn to the same effect.

The lesson: Build your social media profile!

Yes, I hate the phrase 'social media'. But you need the medium. Even if you can't think of a single way to generate an ROI; can't understand what the fuss is about; think all social media users are teenagers, you must build your presence.

Put a link to your company's Facebook fan page on every page of your web site. If you don't have a fan page, create one. It takes about, oh, 3 minutes.
Put a link to your company's Twitter account on your site, too.
If there's a unique online community for your industry, create a presence there and link to that, too.
In order confirmation e-mails, include those links.
In presentations, include 'em, too.

Never mind the marketing potential. That one time you absolutely need a way to reach your audience, but can't do it via your web site, your pre-made social media audience will be there, waiting for news.

That makes social media an ideal crisis communications tool.

I should also point out that the news media had no clue what was going on for the first 4-5 hours of the crisis. We finally figured out the problem by piecing together Twitter posts from other folks.

Free = Worthless: Information Can't Be Free

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:10:51 -0800

Oh, the humanity. I owe Chris Anderson an apology for this one. After rereading it this morning, I was horrified. Did I really write this? Don't get me wrong: I do NOT think 'free' is a good idea. Nor do I think 'information wants to be free' will win out over 'information wants to be expensive'. But I singled out Chris' book because I happened to listen to it. What I write below makes a lot more sense as a general argument against 'free' as a business model. However, I'll leave this up, so you can all enjoy my embarrassment. Now I'm going to head off to chew on my foot a little longer.

In 'Free: The Future of a Radical Price', Chris Anderson says 'information wants to be free' and goes on a utopian tirade about how wonderful things will happen as free information hits critical mass.

Mistake 1: It doesn't add up

First, since I'm a picky History major: Anderson interprets Stewart Brand's original quote, but something doesn't add up:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

Brand isn't saying that all information should be free. He's saying it wants to be free. And that it wants to be expensive at the same time. Anderson takes that quote, ~~deletes~~ analyzes it in a way that makes sense (that there's a tension between free and expensive information) and then goes on talking about how free will win out in the end. That's where our opinions differ. A lot.

I expanded on my explanation here a bit. He didn't so much ignore or delete as bob and weave a bit. I still don't agree with his analysis though. Ultimately 'expensive' must win out over 'free' or you end up with marginal quality.

Mistake 2: Information isn't self-replicating

While information may want to be free, intelligence doesn't. Talent doesn't. And hard work by intelligent, competent people doesn't want to be free.

Information doesn't spring out of the ground. It's created by people. And good information is created by good people.

Mistake 3: Over-generalizing

Marginal information may want to be free.

Crappy information may want to be free.

All other information has value.

Example: I write this blog to attract clients and boost my soggy and unpredictable ego. It's not a humanitarian exercise. If it didn't pay, I wouldn't do it.

What's really happening

This is where all you 'free' fans say "Whoa, Ian, you're an idiot. Look what happened to the music industry".

The music industry isn't collapsing because music 'wants to be free'. It's collapsing because lots of people are stealing, and music executives are reactionary nubwits. Caught in the middle are talented musicians, who work hard to create the tunes we love, only to have them stolen and placed on a file sharing site by a sweaty-palmed 12 year old in Terre Haute.

Newspapers are collapsing because they didn't keep up. It's not some sociological phenomenon. It's an economic catastrophe of the 1st order.

The mantra that Anderson hopes will sell lots of books (oh the irony) is the product of one generation of professionals who didn't understand that the model was changing, and another generation who think looting is OK.

Free sucks. If you want something valuable, pay for it. If you don't want to pay, don't whine at me when you're misinformed, sick of lousy music and spending more time trying to find accurate information than you do reading it.

How to fix it

Want to fix the information economy?

Find a way to separate distribution from value. Create a way to sell songs for $.59 that lets me play them on all my devices. Take advantage of abundant distribution and technology to make information a more profitable proposition.

Develop better compression algorithms. Find ways to get the same song onto any device, from a cell phone to a CD player, and bill me instantly. At that point, stealing is too much work.

Make distribution more and more efficient, so you can sell higher volumes at a lower price and still pay the creators what they're worth.

Declaring information should be 'free' is short-sighted and unsustainable. Make information free and you'll get what you pay for.

Hypocrisy, anyone?

~~What really strikes me most, though, is the hypocrisy. Chris, practice what you preach. Why not give your book away, online, for $0.00? After all, information wants to be free...~~

I totally screwed up on this one. Chris will be releasing digital versions of the book, for free, over the next two weeks. You can read his book online, for free, here.

Internet Marketing Puppy Syndrome

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:32:00 -0800

Some friends of ours got a puppy. Her name's Gracie. She is adorable. Excruciatingly cute and soulful in a head tilting kind of way. Gracie is awesome. But she's a lot of work.

Think about that when you decide to launch that blog, or create a newsletter, or set up a Twitter account.

You know me - I rarely discourage folks from trying stuff. If you don't test and try, you can't make any progress. But you have to really try. You have to go into a project with your eyes open and a genuine desire to succeed.

Approach it like you're looking at that puppy in the window:

When you bring it home, who's going to have to take care of it? Is anyone else at your company going to help out?

Do you have enough money for the vet bills? Do you have a budget?

How long will it take to housebreak? How long will it take for your new marketing project to pay off?

How long before your partner throws the dog out? How much time do you have to make the marketing project pay off?

Are you a Great Dane person looking at a toy poodle? Does this marketing project you're considering fit your organization's personality? If you're a fast-moving place, maybe Twitter is better than a blog, for example.

I'll try to come up with an even more stretched analogy for Monday...

Bing's PPC Meltdown

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:37:45 -0800

I don't try to find ways to pick on Microsoft's marketing techniques.

It's just that they make it so easy.

The folks at Bing have decided to buy pay per click ads on Google Adwords. Not a bad idea.

But they need to learn a bit about phrase and exact match, I think:

And my favorite:

OK, I'll stop. I'm supposed to be on vacation, after all...

Get Free Marketing Advice (With a Catch)

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:48:08 -0800

I'm launching a new service called 1Thing.

The idea: Provide internet marketing advice, in small bites, at a low price.

I've designed a landing page, created the templates, etc..

And I hate it. The landing page is nasty. Horrible. It makes me cry.

I've gotten fantastic advice from other marketers. And I've used quite a bit of it. Problem is, they gave me advice from the perspective of super-experienced internet marketers.

I need advice from potential consumers. That's where you come in. If you read this blog looking for little nuggets of advice you can use to improve your site, then please, take a look at the 1Thing page.

Then, comment below: Do you understand the service? What would make you buy it or not buy it? What do I need to say to make the benefit clear as day?

In exchange, I'll send you 1 piece of 1Thing advice, for nuthin'.

Google Crawling the Wrong Javascript

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:43:00 -0800

I'm throwing this story out there to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.

Google's made a lot of noise recently about their newfound ability to crawl javascript and links that are built into a javascript.

Last week I saw a 500% increase in 'page not found' errors in one client's Google Webmaster Tools. The links all looked like this:

At first, I didn't make the connection between that and Google's improved javascript prowess.

After looking at the client's pages, though, the only place the guilty link appears is in a javascript:

In this context, the forward slash ('/') means 'www.investmentnews.com', so the text above gives you 'www.investmentnews.com/10020708'.

The only problem: That is not a link, Google!

It's just a javascript 'bug' for the client's analytics package, Hitbox. It tells Hitbox to record the pageview with a shorter URL. But it is not a link. No visiting browser would interpret it as one, either.

Anyone else seeing this kind of behavior?

Google folks, any chance of verifying and addressing this?

Thanks,

Your servant/slave/supplicant
Ian

Speaking at OMS on July 1st

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:41:09 -0800

I'm going to be on a panel at the Seattle Online Marketing Summit (OMS) next week, July 1st.

The session is at 3:30 PM, and is titled "Integrating Email, Search, Social into the Entire Online Marketing Channel".

Never mind me, though. Other folks on the panel include Anne kennedy of Beyond Ink and joblr.net, Blake Cahill from Visible Technologies, Jason Gan from Cisco and Steve Gelen as the moderator.

I didn't write the description, so I don't have to suffer from whatever hubris-inspired revenge the gods would inflict for calling myself a "World's leading expert". Here's the whole description:

You can register for OMS Seattle here.

Should I use Pagerank as a metric?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:38:07 -0800

no.

9 Things I'm Not Allowed to Say

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:13:17 -0800

I don't know.
I can't measure that.
I've blogged angry (duh).
I buy links. NO, NO I DON'T! I DON'T!
I've used nofollow.
I use tables when I can't get divs to work.
I've used Web 2.0 button generators.
I tried to make money selling Acai Supplements. After feeling dirty, I gave up.
I can't predict the ROI.

Bonus Round

I use the phrase "social media" regularly (I lick 9-volts to atone).
Your popular idea is dumb.
Your unpopular idea is fantastic.
You did everything right. It just didn't work.
We did everything right. It just didn't work.

Aggregation Aggravation, Part 5: What's next?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:38:25 -0800

This is (thank heavens) the last in a 5-article series about search engines' transition from indexes to aggregators. If you want to start at the beginning, go to part 1.

So far we've established that:

Search engines used to be indexes, where you go search, then toddle off to the site you want. Now, they're becoming aggregators, where you go search, then stick around to read more before they decide which site to visit.
That's a bad thing, if you practice stereotypical, grab-high-rankings-and-damn-the-rest SEO. Which very few good SEOs do.
It's a good thing if you can handle the idea that SEO is part of marketing.

So now what? Do I just abandon you, adrift in your little lifeboat, bobbing on the tide? Come now! This is Ian Lurie you're talking about. I can barely keep my mouth shut when I'm asleep.

Like it or not, here comes some advice:

Learn about Microformats

Microformats are small bits of code that tell browsers, search engines and other software more about the information on a page. For example, I might have an address on the page, like this:

A search engine might crawl that and take an educated guess that it's an address. But there's nothing structural that says "this is an address".

Enter microformats. Add a little additional code, and you get something more like this:

Point a piece of software like Optimus at a page that uses that code, and it immediately finds the tagged information:

To you, that's no big deal. But a piece of software sees that and swoons.

Learn Microformats. Search engines don't consistently support them yet, but they're coming on fast. Visit Microformats.org to learn all the cool things you can do.

Read the Bing Whitepaper

I know. Yawn. Read it anyway. There's some great insight in this whitepaper regarding how Bing builds rankings, how it works with Flash, and what Microsoft's intent is (aside from world domination):

Download the whitepaper here

Change your priorities

Ian's First Rule Of Marketing Failure: On the average web site build and launch, clients budget 1 hour of writing for every 20 hours of design.

That used to be merely misguided. Now it's suicide. The typical website visitor pattern used to be:

Do a search.
Find the top 3 rankings. Click one.
In the first 2-3 seconds decide if you're staying, based on the look and feel.
Then do boring stuff like reading.

With the rise of aggregator-style features, though, the new visitor pattern will be:

Do a search.
Find the top 5-10 rankings.
Spend 10-20 seconds previewing to find the site you want.
Click through to that site.
In the first 2-3 seconds decide if you're staying, based on the look and feel.
Then do boring stuff like reading.

You need to change your priorities. Content quality is going to play a far larger role in clickthru. No more skimping on description tags, and no more cutting and pasting content from that print piece you did for a trade show back in 1999.

Learn good web copywriting, and focus half your project budget on it.

Keep up

Read blogs like the SERoundtable and SEOMOZ to keep abreast of changes in the industry.

Or, be lazy and wait for me to catch up. I'll write about it here.

That's all folks

One thing I can guarantee: The trend towards aggregation will not stop. Search engines are fighting over visits and searches by a finite audience. The logical next step is to fight for that audience's limited attention span. That requires aggregated content.

Previously in the series

Aggravation
Controlling what shows up (as much as you can)
Making Folks Click: Content's back, baby!
Opting Out
Microformats, sorting and other nightmares

Internet Marketing Stream of Consciousness

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:12:16 -0800

Yawn stretch OK I'm up. mmmm mini wheats. No guinea pigs I will not give you mini wheats the last time I did that you ran around your cage so fast I couldn't see you. Drive drive HOONK WATCH OUT YOU LOSER. Hrm what's our alarm code again? Oh yeah. Phew. Ah crap forgot the SEO review for www.mysite.com and also to review the links pointing at www.theirsite.com. Hmmm, links. Links are fun. Let's go look at Linkscape and see what's in there for this client. Gaaaah they lost 20 links wth!? Ring ring. Wait so you're telling me that your organic sales are up 32% 3 weeks after you fired us and that has nothing to do with the work we did because it happened after you fired us? Okaaaay. Next. Researching some XML magical stuff never did understand XML but it just works. OK click click type type write some code. Refresh the page. KAAABOOOOOOOM. Well, that didn't work. Back to the drawing board. Undo undo undo. Lunch nom nom nom. Off to rewrite some landing page copy maybe I should redo the design too. Knock knock. No, you don't need my permission to change 'teh' to 'the' on the home page honest it's OK go for it. OK back to work on that lander. "Buy now or you'll die" probably too strong. "Buy it. Love it. It'll change your life" oooh much better, plus I never use the product name which is good since the client asked me not to to preserve the mystery. Ring Ring. Yup. No. Yup. OK. Sounds good thanks. Bye. What? No. OK bye. Back to writing OK bullet bullet bullet write write write paragraph image buy now save and DONE woo hoo. Oh crap it's 3 PM already?! Time to burn another 15 minutes of my life on Twitter. Wow I never knew that some SEOs are afraid of centipedes that'd be a fun Google bomb. Yeah, right, in my spare time. Oh look someone else is claiming they never believed in nofollow. So that leaves, what, 3 people on earth who ever used it? Man, they must've been busy. Ring ring. Yes this is Ian. No I don't want to invest in a oil well in Texas but thanks. Click. Check e-mail No Mr. Greg Jones I don't want to use your e-mail append service but hey thanks a million. Woo landed a new client OK time to kick that one off and set up that meeting. Gar 30 minutes before I have to head home. What the hell am I going to blog today? I wanted to wrap up my series on search engines as aggregators but I didn't have time. I know! I'll do stream of consciousness!

If you're going to run a spam blog...

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:06:21 -0800

...at least make sure your error messages don't scream 'cloaking' to the world:

Aggregation Aggravation, Part 4: Opting Out Of Bing Document Preview

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:16:04 -0800

This is part 4 of my series on the new world of search, and how search engines are becoming aggregators rather than indexes. Check the links at the bottom of the page for previous posts.

This post is blessedly short, after my last 3 epistles.

Let's say you don't want that page preview (called a 'Document Preview' by Microsoft, by the way) to show up in the Bing results:

Maybe you want to preserve the mystery of it all, or you have a lousy page preview.

You can tell Bing not to create a preview two ways:

By putting this code in <head> element:

Or by putting this in your robots.txt file:

x-robots-tag: nopreview

The first method will just block the document preview for that one page. Use it, and Bing will not show a document preview for that page.

The second will block it for your entire site. Use it, and Bing will not show a document preview for any page on your site.

Not recommended

I don't recommend using these tags, by the way. If every other listing on the page has a document preview, and yours doesn't, it'll cost you clicks. You're better off focusing on clickability, instead.

Previously in the series

Aggravation
Controlling what shows up (as much as you can)
Making Folks Click: Content's back, baby!
Opting Out
Microformats, sorting and other nightmares

Aggregation Aggravation, Part 3: Clickability

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:16:03 -0800

This is part 3 of a 5-part series on the changing face of search. See the links at the bottom to read Parts 1 and 2

In a world of aggregators, you can still get visitors to your web site. It's all about clickability. But before I get to the details, I have to say...

Told ya so! I've always said SEO and internet marketing are about marketing basics. And now these fundamentals are even more important: You need a good message and great copy just to get folks to click to your site. Mwahahahaha. My evil dreams of an old-school marketing smackdown are coming true!

K. I'm done.

Now, we'll talk about...

Clickability

The best SEOs have known about clickability for a long time. It's the real reason they care about 'search friendly' urls and meta description tags: An easy-to-read URL and a great description tag will get more folks to click on your ranking.

A clickable search listing will:

Clearly describe what I'm going to see when I click;
Make me want to see it;
Inspire confidence in the site to which I'll go.

Here's an example: Today, I installed Windows 7 on my Mac using a program called Parallels. First, though, I wanted to see if it was possible, so I searched for 'Windows 7 Parallels OS X'. Here's what I saw:

A glance at the Parallels listing to implies I can't do it. It sure isn't encouraging. Luckily another site does a better job selling me on Parallels than Parallels.com does. As you learned yesterday, Google grabbed the title and description tags on SimpleHelp and built a search snippet I could sink my teeth into.

After visiting the SimpleHelp site I not only learned I could install Windows 7, I bought an upgrade to Parallels. Guys, you owe SimpleHelp a commission.

That's clickability in action.

On Google and Yahoo!, it's easy (sort of)

On Google, you 'just' need a well crafted title and description tag. Then you need to hope Googlebot grabs those and not some other randomness.

Note that the SimpleHelp site doesn't actually have a description tag. Luckily, Google grabbed the first relevant copy, which is a darned good description.

If Parallels wants to get more OS X geeks installing their software, they could write a how-to for installing Windows 7 using Parallels 4. Then give it a clear title tag like:

Installing Windows 7 on OS X Using Parallels 4.0

And add a description tag that reads:

Run Windows 7 on your Mac (with no reboot!) with Parallels 4.0. Click here to read step-by-step installation and setup instructions.

The title tag tells me what I'm going to see. The description tag clarifies it a bit and adds the 'with no reboot' - that's a cool feature. And the lack of phrases like "don't upgrade" and "opens beta signup" inspires confidence.

Yahoo!'s similar, if a bit more quirky thanks to the Yahoo! Directory. See yesterday's post for ways to force Yahoo! to ignore the directory.

Bing Will Make You Market Yourself

Bing throws adds a variable with their page preview, which it pulls right from the copy on your page:

Bing uses the first copy it finds on the page. That means (gasp) that you need to start with a clear description of your product (or service) and its benefits.

Once again, SimpleHelp carries the day:

They're number 6 on the page, but I'll bet they get more clicks than the #2-5 listings, which are mostly from the Parallels site and have previews like 'To Install Windows to the VM using CD/DVD file image'.

The SimpleHelp site gets a great preview because Bing grabbed the first sentence on the page as the search snippet (since there was no description tag) and then continued on down the page for the page preview:

Bing requires fantastic marketing copy. You must - must - get right to the point: In the first 2-3 sentences on your page, state what you're going to do for the reader and how.

And those first few sentences must:

Clearly describe what I'm going to see;
Make me want to see it;
Inspire confidence in the site.

Sound familiar?

Deja Vu All Over Again

The best sales letters have always used this principle. Grab the reader with your headline and first paragraph. Then explain the details.

So get retro. Put on a nice smoking jacket, read some David Ogilvy and learn how to market the old-fashioned way: With great copy. Your SEO will be the better for it.

Previously in the series

Aggravation
Controlling what shows up (as much as you can)
Making Folks Click: Content's back, baby!
Opting Out
Microformats, sorting and other nightmares

Aggregation Aggravation, Part 2: What Goes Where

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 14:19:59 -0800

This is part 2 of my series on SEO in the world of aggregation. You can read part 1 here.

In today's installment, I'll give you my best educated guess as to how search engines (particularly Bing) decide what appears where in the search results, and how to control what they publish.

This matters a lot more than it used to. As search engines move from indexes to aggregators, clickability will be as important as rankings.

What Goes Where in Bing Search Results

Microsoft's new Bing is closest to becoming an aggregator, and therefore deserves the most attention. Yeah, their market share is tiny. That could change. Or Google could decide to copy their page preview. Either way, you'll want to understand how Bing builds its page preview.

Bing grabs the search title and snippet from the title tag and meta description tag, like most search engines. And, like most search engines, it'll go elsewhere to find the title and snippet if you don't give it one, so it pays to have a descriptive title tag, and an enticing title tag. In this result, AirFreeTires.com looks pretty good. BicycleEverything.com less so, because they've put keywords into their description tag:

Not so exciting, so far. But roll over a listing, and you get a preview of the page itself. That preview lets your potential customers read a bit of your site without ever clicking:

Bing is grabbing the text copy from the first chunk of non-heading, non-linking text on the page:

It even skipped past links and headings. Clever monkey.

The phone number seems to be pulled from the ether, or from Live Local search results. You can flip a coin on that one. I'd love to say microformats play into it, but we use microformats on our site and our phone number doesn't show up. Probably all those nasty Microsoft posts I've done.

Bing creates the 'Also on this page' links list from any text-based primary navigation on the page:

Image-based or sloppily-coded navigation gets the cold shoulder.

It shocks me, but this makes a certain amount of sense. If Bing builds previews this way, then you need to:

State your selling proposition right away in your sales copy.
Use clear, text-based navigation.

More details about this tomorrow.

Those Other Two

Oh, yeah, Google and Yahoo!. Them. The other 91% of the market.

Well, the good news is, they aren't doing this kind of page previewing yet. But they will, trust me.

For now, it's pretty simple: They build their search snippets with the title tag and description meta tag.

Except for two exceptions:

Google may use your Open Directory site description instead of your description tag. Getting listed in Open Directory is a Kafkaesque nightmare comprised of 10 minutes typing in your site's information and then 10 years of waiting for someone to actually review and approve it. You do not want your Open Directory Project listing in your search results. Luckily, you can tell Google not to use your ODP listing with this code:

Yahoo!, on the other hand, may use your Yahoo! Directory listing. Yahoo! Directory is like ODP, only you pay $300 to get your listing submitted. More accurately, someone who worked at your company 5 years ago paid, then lost the e-mail and password to edit the listing and quit in a huff over fridge cleaning duties.

Chances are you can't get in to edit the listing, and calling Yahoo! is impossible (unless you want to hear the CEO claim they're not a search engine) so poof, you're screwed. Yahoo! has planned for this, though, with their own version of the NOODP meta tag. Put this on every page of your site, and you're once again in control of your destiny:

Phew.

So, the rules are pretty clear here, too:

Write a title tag that makes sense. Bicycle Tires Tires for Bicycles Tires Tires Bicycles is not a good title tag, no matter what ranking it gets you.
Put some thought into your meta description tag. A well-written tag could get you clicks you'd otherwise lose.

Again, more on this tomorrow.

Why All This Matters

Ignore what goes where, and you may end up with unclickable search listings.

Here's a great example of a high ranking with poor clickability, thanks to Bing's new page preview. This site engaged in a little keyword spam, and put a bunch of keywords at the very top of the page:

So their Bing page preview looks like this:

Whatever 'expert' gave this fellow SEO advice got him a nice #2 spot on Bing. And a listing that will chase everyone away. Congrats. All of the work this site owner put into gaining that #2 position is being marginalized by a lousy preview.

That's all folks

That's it for today. I've skipped stuff like product search, universal search and other fine things because I've written about them before, and isn't this post long enough?

Previously in the series

Aggravation
Controlling what shows up (as much as you can)
Making Folks Click: Content's back, baby!
Opting Out
Microformats, sorting and other nightmares

Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon

11 ways to be a schmuck

The speed factor: Google algorithm change favors small business

They got it backwards

Quick research

Related reading

7 Tips for StumbleUpon Success

No manipulation

Make yourself a Stumble target

Related reading

7 Reasons PubCon is a must for next year

Related reads (sort of)

Using eBay as a keyword research tool

Some big gotchas

A good starting point

Things to do

Analytics-Driven SEO: A lesson in 4 steps

Step 1: Figure out what's got their attention

Step 2: Find your juiciest keywords

Step 3: Figure out if you have a chance

Step 4: Optimize!

Analytics-driven means customer-centric

Related Links and Stuff

12 SEO things I want

Want to be a great internet marketer? Be like CSI.

The sneak peek builds the connection

It doesn't work without authenticity

Put it together, man!

I got snake oil in my black hat (Guest Post)

14 social media lessons we can all learn

1. It's just media.

2. If you want to talk, first learn to listen.

3. If you want to talk, learn the language.

4. Answer questions. Contribute.

5. Start conversations that matter (as much as possible)

6. Don't look for instant dollars.

7. No takebacks.

8. Set a routine.

9. Don't take yourself so seriously.

10. Assemble a toolset.

11. Start using photos.

12. Spread the love.

13. Find new friends

14. That's all, folks

Related post and such

8 marketing messages we all know are lies

RFPs Suck - Don't take my word for it...

One smart guy

Sound Transit Web Site Review: They get an F-

13 Internet marketing tips for Realtors

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Free web site review contest: The winners

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Some posts you may actually want to read

Action + perception = identity: Branding in Social Media

Action is still the same

Perception spreads faster

What to do?

The speed of perception

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Watch me hide behind a concrete post: My Wordcamp Seattle Presentation

3 Feedburner Engagement Stats You Must Follow

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Uncommon Uses

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SEO, Title Tags and Rankings: CM Site Review #5

Dork detection: 10 questions for 'professional' developers

Related Reading and Pimping

Yep, Twitter is Down

Get a $500 Website Review, Free

The deal

In case you're wondering...

Update: Keyword Research Tools Showdown (Wordtracker)

Why Gourmet Died: Publishers, pay attention

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Just a little effort

More food for thought

The tipping point

It's a crime