Now it’s time to take those ideas and figure out which ones will work the best.  This is done through experimentation and testing.  Lucky for us Web geeks, testing on the Web holds a major advantage over all other marketing channels because of very low cost and fewer limitations.  This has made setting up, running and controlling tests – as well as the ability to collect and analyze the data – easier and cheaper than ever. This in turn makes guessing what you should do with your site  an even worse proposition than guessing what you should do in offline channels (which is also bad).  Not doing experimentation and testing isn’t an option.  It’s mandatory.

With that said, what can you do?  Testing on the Web basically boils down to two options – A/B Testing and Multivariate Testing.

A/B Testing

These tests are the cheapest and quickest.  You test two uniquely different participants for a predetermined outcome. For example, you make two very different versions of your homepage and see which one is best at getting visitors to click through to the product categories. Or, you see if providing a 2-step checkout process versus a 4-step checkout process works better for your e-commerce conversion rate.

Multivariate Testing (MVT)

With these tests, you create multiple variations of multiple elements of a page and have a testing tool (like Google’s Website Optimizer) mix and match them to the visitors. In the end, you are able to see not only which elements contributed the most to a lift for your outcome, but also which combinations of elements work the best.

While A/B Testing is much easier and demands less resources, it does not give you data that is as good as MVT.  Why?  Because after your A/B test is complete, you may know that version B of your homepage performed better, but you don’t know why. Was it the headline, the images, the navigation layout, the color of the call-to-action button?  Only with MVT can you find out.  So, start with A/B tests to get your feet wet, but jump into MVT as soon as you’re ready.

Get Creative

You can use these tests to experiment with just about anything. Of course, you want to test those areas that will most affect your bottom line. But when you’ve gotten comfortable with testing, that can get very creative. For instance, let’s say you have a $100 product that you are offering on sale for $10 off.  How would offering 10% off instead of $10 off affect sales? You’re thinking it won’t because it’s the same amount? You might be surprised .

How about testing more cheaply and easily on your site what would cost more money to test elsewhere? Like products you’re thinking of putting in your store, calls-to-action for paid search ads, or offers in your email newsletter.

If you’re tracking what’s important and have actively put in place ways to listen to your customers, now it’s time to find out the best ways to deliver what they want. So, use what customers give you to start developing hypotheses about how you could improve their experience. Put your ideas on how to accomplish the goal into action! If you do, you will start to have a distinct competitive advantage.

With that said, there are some basic components of every SEO campaign (not to mention a really big checklist) that form the foundation of a successful campaign. Anyone who’s been around SEO for any length of time already knows these “basics,” but they bear repeating for anyone who is unfamiliar as to where to begin with their SEO effort:

SEO & Keyword Research

Every SEO campaign starts with keyword research. It’s critical to uncover and organize your core terms and extended phrases in order to create the optimization road map moving forward.

The SEO uses keyword information to create customized titles, descriptions and page heading recommendations, along with editing the content of your pages to make them more keyword friendly. The SEO can use your existing content and rewrite it specifically to integrate the keywords selected, as well as improve the sales conversion funnel. Text edits should includes internal linking to other important pages as well as adding strategic calls to action if necessary.

As keyword performance is measured, additional recommendations should be provided, tweaking the pages to improve rankings and conversions.

Information Architecture & Usability

SEOa should regularly be reviewing site analytics information in order to seek out and uncover site architectural issues that hinder your performance in the search engines. Using this information, they can provide specific recommendations and solutions that will build better site architecture, remove duplicate content, fix problematic HTML and a whole lot more.

The mission here is to make your site search and searcher friendly on all levels.

Content Review

A site-wide content review provides strategic recommendations designed to help you produce content that better relates to your audience, effectively uses frequently searched keywords and improves the overall sales message being delivered. The goal is to create engaging content that informs, educates and sells your products or services while also attracting visitors through the search engines.

Content development doesn’t assist SEO alone, but also improves your sales process and your link and social media efforts. Without great content, your site really doesn’t deserve great search engine placement.

Link Building

Your SEO should research your and your competitor’s link landscape and provide you with a variety of linking opportunities to pursue. These opportunities include lists of  sites, directories, blogs, and other strategic sites and the best approach for establishing a linking relationship that compliments your optimization efforts.

The SEO works to establish contact with these link opportunity sites and lays the groundwork for a (linking) relationship, submits linking requests and negotiates link placement, among other things.

Social Media

Developing an immediate and long-term social media strategy is critical to leveraging your blog, Twitter, Facebook and other social streams to your advantage. In conjunction with the SEO efforts and content strategy efforts, the social strategy pushes content in the most effective way, monitors reputation and boosts SEO performance through keyword and link targeting. Part of the social media strategy is to create a publishing calendar that can help you keep moving forward and not get caught in social stagnation.

Analytics & Conversion Optimization

SEOs need to regularly review your and your competitor’s Web data to understand search performance and user trends. With this information, they can provide additional insight and strategy recommendations that assist on-page optimization, link building, social media and content development.

Based on the analytic data and findings, the SEO can conduct a/b and multivariate testing designed to test various performance and conversion options. Selecting the best performing options provides the ammunition needed to continually improve your site conversion rates.

These are just the basic fundamentals of a solid web marketing campaign. Each area noted here can produce a plethora of actions, reactions and recommendations that are designed to continually propel you forward in the search results. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the tasks in each of these categories, but it can give you a good place to start.

Follow me+ at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Have Content Worthy Of Linking To

If you’ve been listening to or engaging in conversations regarding web marketing, you’ve probably heard this mentioned as often as the Pittsburgh Steelers have been to the Super Bowl: you’ve got to have great content to build links.

Having just one piece of content won’t be enough to sustain value over time. It’s vital to have a content strategy. By having a strategy, you’re able to build a following that generally consists of your target audience. If you create well-researched and well-written content around their needs, you’ll naturally build links and become a source of authority. Blogs can be a great platform for sharing content, but there are many other innovative content types.

Get Your Social Shares in Front of the Right Eyes

Again, this will take time, but find out who the influential voices are in your niche. Begin to interact with them on social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn to build a relationship with them. Read and add thoughtful feedback on their blog posts. Share their content on your social streams.

In creating those connections, it’s highly likely that they’ll begin to follow you. And, to make sure I beat the dead horse, I’ll remind you to have desirable content for them to link to.

If You Build the Relationship, They Will Retweet/Repeat

Social shares aren’t worth much if they aren’t distributed by those with clout (or is that spelled “klout”?). That’s why it’s necessary to build contacts who provide some swagger. In Todd Heim’s post, Social Media Link Building he writes, “Even if your content is appropriate and of acceptable quality, you still need to have some influence and a network of users for it to spread. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.”

Your ROI will be more significant if you spend your time building associations with prominent people. These free tools that can help you find people to follow:  Twitter Advanced Search, Followerwonk, Tweepz and Twellowhood just to name a few.

Look to see how many followers/friends/likes an account has, as well as the frequency and substance of their posts. These are helpful indicators to figure out how noteworthy a person is. Often, the more people following them and the fewer they follow, the more authoritative they are.

So What?

If you take these ideas and make them actionable in your social media link-building strategy, you’ll know the likes and tweets have value, not only because of what they contain, but also because of the network of people that will re-share them.

Feel free to disagree with me in the comment section, or let me know the ideas you have.

Persona = motivation (what the visitor needs, why they are on your site)
Personality = temperament (how they navigate, what they need to see or read to find what they want)

Using both personalities and personas is important when writing great content that is both user- and search-engine friendly.

Use personalities to give your visitors the content the need

Despite what we believe about some people, every person has a personality. That personality determines how searchers seek out information that interests them. It effects keywords, sites they click on, how they navigate and what their expectations are.

There are four basic personality types, and every person usually has one that is dominant over the others, while maintaining some attributes of them all. Understanding these personality types helps you create a site that provides visitors the information they need to make the best decision for them and for you.

The four personality types:

• Competitive (aka Choleric or Lion)
• Spontaneous (aka Phlegmatic or Golden Retriever)
• Humanistic (aka Sanguine or Otter)
• Methodical (aka Melancholy or Beaver)

Competitive
Mal is a competitive personality. He wants to see options before making a decision. Not just some of them; all of them. He will often look at every nuance possible to determine which iteration of a particular product or service is the best one. Because of this, Mal can become frustrated when he can’t find the “perfect” option.

Mal is driven and thrives on challenges, sometimes even volunteering when others avoid. Everything is measured in goals and achieving those goals. Leisurely (non-goal oriented) activity is difficult for Mal as he measures his self worth through success. Mal does not like inefficiency and constantly seeks ways to improve things. When looking for a product, the one and only concern is – will it help him achieve his goals. As such, he is also hard to sell to, as he isn’t easily swayed by fluffy marketing language.

Traits:

• Spontaneous buyers – no time to “shop around”
• Curiosity driven – try to peak their interest
• Goal oriented – they are there for a purpose
• Appreciates honesty – no BS!
• Loyal customer – earn their business, they’ll be back
• Hard to sell – forget all the emotional fluff
• Dislikes inefficiency and disorganization – make your site EASY to use
• Impatient – tell them and tell them quick!
• Abandons page and sale easily – if they can’t find it they’re out

To sell to Mal, you must start with being upfront and honest. Creditability is important and you can establish that by saying what most people won’t–point out your own negatives along with your positives. Never make claims that cannot be substantiated and proven true. Do what you can to demonstrate the true value of your product without over-hyping it. Make sure all necessary information is readily available so they don’t have to dig just to find what they need. Use links and calls to action to get them to take the next step in the conversion process.

Spontaneous
Kaylee is a follower of whatever happens to be the latest trends and places a high value on others opinions. For her, it’s not so much about finding the value herself, but seeing what other trusted sources have to say. This gives her assurance she is making the right purchasing decision. She also fears missing out on a good thing, which can cause her to buy based on the excitement factor alone. Immediate gratification is a primary motivation, so great customer service before and after the sale helps provide the comfort and justification needed to help her feel like she made a good decision.

Traits:

• Follows trends – fads are a good thing
• Feeds on positive opinion – get testimonials and reviews
• Opinion-based buying – facts don’t matter so much
• Sold by word of mouth – social media is key
• Turned away by negative opinions – good products rule
• May suffer from buyer’s remorse – after-the-sale reinforcement is needed to get them back

To sell to Kaylee, your site must go beyond the bland corporate mumbo-jumbo. Content must be captivating and speak to her on an emotional level. Kaylee wants a lot of information but will likely skim until she finds what she needs. Be sure to clearly show your unique value proposition and that of your products and/or services. Provided they are good, having ready access to customer reviews and testimonials will be the final push for her purchasing decision.

Humanistic
Zoe wants to see your testimonials, but for a different reason. She is looking for anything that confirms that you are able to meet her needs, and the testimonials will either back that up or send up the red flags. Zoe looks at the bigger picture when making decisions and will often put the needs of others before herself. She wants to choose something that has broad acceptance, fearing any decision that may leave her hung out to dry on a planet full of Reavers. She doesn’t like getting “locked in,” so providing options for cancellation or returns can give her a sense of freedom to change her mind.

Traits:

• Motivated by security – display guarantees, return and cancellation policies
• Repeat buyer – once comfortable, they’ll come back
• Scared of commitment – make buying (and changing mind) easy
• Needs constant reassurance – hold their hand through the sales process
• Relies too heavily on others’ opinions – build up positive reviews and testimonials

To reach Zoe, be sure to have ample links to the pages that reinforce your trust, commitment and quality. About us and testimonial pages are frequently visited so make sure yours is robust. Provide reassurances via guarantees, links to policy pages and iterate your site security. Be sure your content maintains a personal tone and often speaks of the bigger picture, as to Zoe, it’s not always about her.

Methodical
Simon Tam will be the most likely to read every word on your page. In fact, he’s likely to read every page on your site. He’s not an impulse buyers but reviews and weighs all the evidence in order to make an informed decision. Dr. Tam is a logical person with an eye for detail. He is likely on your site looking to solve a problem of some kind. Before making a decision, he weighs everything to make sure it is a responsible decision in the end.

Traits:

• Feature oriented – benefits are not warranted here
• Does not like fluff – be straight and honest
• Factual based buyer – back up your claims
• Engaged in content – more info is good info
• Skeptical – convincing may be tough
• Needs specific, detailed information – provide as much as you can

To reach Simon you need to present hard evidence in an organized fashion. He doesn’t care about a personal touch, but rather wants an authoritative voice. Simon likes graphs and tables, specs and any other detailed “proof” you can provide. State your facts with little fluff as that only raises the skeptical hairs on his head. Don’t say anything that sounds too good to be true, because it likely is and Simon will walk away.

Using information about these basic personalities helps SEOs and content writers to structure a website with the most appropriate content available on each page. Used in conjunction with established personas, the site content can be created to meet the specific needs of different individuals with different temperaments, different desires and different goals… but ultimately driving them to the final goal: the sale.

Addressing the right persona with the right temperament in the right place can be tricky. But these considerations are an important part of creating a website that will drive the most conversions possible.

Follow me+ at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Today we published our latest inbound marketing e-book, the 2012 edition of Link Building Secrets Revealed. Available for download at no cost on the Pole Position Marketing website, the e-book is a compilation of helpful link-building tips from 10 of the industry’s leading link builders, including:

• Jim Boykin of Internet Marketing Ninjas
• Peter da Vanzo of GoFish Media Ltd.
• Michele Baldoni of MBWeb
• Peter van der Graaf of SearchSpecialist.nl
• Eric Ward of EricWard.com
• John Doherty of Distilled
• Jason Acidre of KaiserTheSage.com
• Garrett French of Citation Labs
• Melanie Nathan of CanadianSEO 
• Arnie Kuenn of Vertical Measures

The new link-building resource is one of several e-books offered by Pole Position Marketing, which include The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!, Keyword Research and Selection and Destination Search Engine Marketing – all authored by our CEO Stoney deGeyter.

Link Building Secrets Revealed 2012 is available in Pole Position Marketing’s online learning library.

-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

It doesn’t need to be said that the higher-ups mostly care about getting more of what they want to happen to actually happen.  If you can show that it is happening and that giving you more money will make it happen more, then you’ll most likely get more money to make it happen more.  Getting the budget you need can seem like rocket science, but it’s really not.  If may not be easy, but it is simple.

If you are the higher up, then you want to see if the things you have been doing are working or not from a big-picture perspective.  That’s what the All Traffic Sources report in your analytics tool shows you.  If resources have been invested in growing your Twitter following, are you acquiring visitors from that source?  If so, are they completing the outcomes that you want them to complete at a rate that is acceptable?  If not, why not?  If so, what are some ideas to do more of it and do it even better?  You are finding out how successful you’ve been at accomplishing what it is you’ve set out to accomplish.  This way you can adjust based on that.

You can see that this report is comparing 2 months of data to the preceding two months.  Why?  They really stepped up their effort to expand their Twitter reach in October.  As we can see, it’s working.  Twitter has climbed up to the 3rd largest source of traffic to the site.  But, you can’t stop there.  Why?  It’s about outcomes baby.  Outcomes!  Is the traffic we’ve worked so hard to attract paying off?  Are they relevant visitors that we are building a relationship with?  Here you go…

Conversion so far looks good, but as you can see, it’s not really a significant amount of traffic.  That tells me that they should be encouraged because what they have done is working, but they need to build momentum and keep it going.  Maybe give it a little more oomph in their efforts and re-evaluate after a couple more months.

You can see how this report gives you a nice little overview of how your actions are affecting your site, giving you insight into the relationship between your effort and what you want for results.

When creating engaging content, there are two concepts that you must first understand: why visitors are on your site and what they want to find. These two concepts can be translated into two words: personas and personalities.

Persona = motivation (what the visitor needs, why they are on your site)
Personality = temperament (how they navigate, what they need to see or read to find what they want)

If you want to create content that engages with your audience and motivates them to take the conversion action you desire, you have to get into the mind of the visitor. Know what they want and why, and then you can create content that engages readers on their level and allows your content to meet their specific needs.

I’ll cover the personality aspect of writing in another post. Here we’ll discuss how to create personas that help you understand your visitors’ motivations, why they are on your site and how your content can convert them based on that knowledge.

Using Personas to See Your Visitor’s Needs

Because there can be dozens, if not hundreds, of reasons a visitor might be coming to your site, it’s easy to get bogged down in trying to develop a persona for every possibility. Don’t get stuck in that trap. With a little work, you can boil everything into a handful of personas that you can use to craft content that meets virtually all of your potential customer’s needs.

I’ve developed three very basic personas that can provide a solid framework for just about any visitor. This is by no means comprehensive, nor will they work for every kind of site, but it can give you a general idea how to quickly put together a persona you can work with. You’ll want to put more work into analyzing visitors to your site specifically, but this should give you start.

The “how-to” Persona
This person is an information seeker. They are not necessarily looking to buy a product or service, but want to learn how do it themselves. This visitor likes checklists, how-to guides, videos and any other information they can get their digital hands on. Basically, they are information and knowledge seekers. Usually they are looking for free information, but some are willing to pay if the value is there.

Example: Athena goes to a baby products site to find out how to properly install a car seat in her Raptor. Her goal is to learn how install the seat properly, with minimal work, and without teaching her baby, Hera, how to say “fracking”, “fracked up”, “frack it” or any other of its variables.

How-to videos or step-by-step instructions give Athena and her hubby, Helo, exactly what they are looking for. This type of free how-to content doesn’t create immediate sales, but it does build brand loyalists. Athena may never become a customer, but she may share information about your site with Starbuck, who also has a child. Or, Athena may post about it on her blog, sharing your content (and brand name) with all of the 12 colonies!

The “I care” Persona
These people are usually researching something they care about, and a thoughtful approach is necessary. They are passionate about a topic and likely consider themselves extremely knowledgeable, if not “experts.” Anything less than authoritative content will likely leave them unimpressed. Your job is to show them how your product or service is going to meet their needs and convince them it is the best solution.

Example: Gaeta goes to a baby products site looking for a safe and reliable car seat. He’s been reading (on your site?) about the importance of car seats, which car seats have better safety ratings, and learning how to install them properly in a number of spacecraft. His goal is to buy the best seat possible, regardless of price. Whistles and bells are a secondary concern. If you can provide the information that satisfies Gaeta’s informational needs, and have the product in stock, you’ve got yourself a reliable customer.

The “Just get it to me” Persona
They are the type that don’t really know what they want but don’t care about much of anything other than, “how do I get this (or do this) fast?” They have a need but are unsure on how to best to fill that need. They just want a product or service that gives them the desire result.

Example: Tigh needs a car seat. To him (and Ellen, his wife), all car seats are essentially the same. They don’t understand why one is more expensive than the other, unless it comes with apps that tap directly into the CIC, or allow him to order his next bottle (his or the baby’s) through a network-connected device. Most likely Tigh will choose the least expensive car seat available, as long as it works and it has a place to hold his flask. Given the right information in the right way, Tigh can be convinced to pay more for certain features.

You can see how each of these personas gives you ammunition for creating content that will meet the needs and expectations of each. Some content may be stand-alone for each persona, however it’s possible to incorporate elements (or links) for each of these into a single page. The better your personas, the better targeted your content will be, and more likely it will be to produce the conversions you want.

Follow me+ at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

I think it’s some of both and a little of all. SEO has to focus on more than just “getting rankings” and must use the knowledge of the search engines to bring together all the various online marketing elements into a singular web marketing campaign. People seem to be using the term “inbound marketing” more and more to describe this integrated approach.

Businesses today need much more than an SEO agency. They need a web marketing firm that looks beyond rankings to help clients set online growth goals, develop strategies to achieve those goals and measure the success of those strategies along the way. Those goals are achieved through a variety of online marketing channels.

SEOs must use the skills they have to provide needed recommendations to get clients the results they want, regardless of the avenue it takes to get those results. SEOs are there to help you build the most optimized, search- and searcher-friendly site possible; this attracts visitors, builds engagement and, ultimately, converts those visitors into customers.

Why Collaboration is Essential

Successful SEO is not the responsibility of any one person, but is a collaboration between the marketers, the developers and the business managers. If any one group fails to fulfill their part in the process, the success of the online marketing campaign also fails. After all, we don’t rank websites, Google does.

Over the past five years search engines have added an increasing number of signals that factor into the ranking performance of a website. Google boasts there are more than 200 ranking signals being used, and at any time there are anywhere from 50-200 different versions of the algorithm in effect. The weight of each of the search signals vary by industry, website and even the individual as locality, personalization, social networks, relevance, comprehensiveness, freshness and speed all factor in and even change on a daily basis.

It takes much more than an “optimized” website to get good rankings. It takes a great website! That means great design, great usability, great content, great customer service, great architecture, great optimization and time. You can have all the right pieces for a great website but time is still a crucial factor.

For search engines, ranking a website is about trust. The more the site is trusted in all the areas mentioned above, the better it will rank. But as with any relationship, trust takes time to build, and, unfortunately, there are no shortcuts.

Building a Great Website

Much of what Google or other search engines consider a “quality website” deemed worthy of a top ranking falls outside the scope of traditional SEO (i.e. adding keywords to the page). The SEO and web marketing team must help you set the strategy (or work with you to do so), make recommendations, and seek out ways to improve your site based on known algorithm criteria, personal experience and historical testing. These recommendations must then be implemented if you want results.

It’s not about temporarily achieving top rankings because you’ve outsmarted the algorithm, but rather to build a site that deserves top rankings because your website is better than the competition and you’ve established the trust signals to prove it. SEO firms today must be web marketing firms that do SEO (and social media, analytics, link building, etc.). The goal is to help you build a better website. No, not just a better website, a great website!

Call that SEO if you want. Some are now calling it “Inbound Marketing.” I just call it good Web marketing!

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Step One: What’s the Point?

The first step in this shift needs to involve laying out the ultimate reason the website exists, along with the micro-actions that signify the movement of a prospect toward that outcome (stick with 3-5 so you don’t lose focus).  They could be purchases or certain behaviors.  Whatever these actions are, they are the ones that tell you if your site is successfully accomplishing its business purpose.

If you lay these out correctly, they will mostly be outcomes that can be given an economic value.  But, be careful not to focus on just e-commerce metrics like Conversion Rate. Why? People come to your site to do activities other than just purchase something.  They research, they look for jobs, they get support, read some content, etc.  They don’t need to buy something for it to be a quality visit and for you to conclude that your website did it’s job. Your website did it’s job if visitors were able to complete the task they came to your website to perform.

Here are some valuable metrics other than conversion rate that focus on behaviors that, if improved, directly impact the bottom line…

1. Cart and Checkout Abandonment – This shows the people who commit to buying a product on your site and then bail.  Find out where and why people don’t start the checkout process after adding to their cart and don’t finish the checkout process after they start. This puts more money directly into your pocket.
2. Free PDF Downloads – If you have a B2B site, you most likely have a longer sales cycle, and visitors to your site might typically do a lot of research before deciding to purchase. If they come to your site and consume a PDF of the information that leads to conversions, this is success.  It should be measured.
3. Visitor Loyalty and Recency – This metrics distributes visitors in a chosen time period based upon the number of times they have visited a site and the time period between visits. If you have a content site that makes money based on page views, then improving this will directly affect your bottom line.
4. Average Order Value – If you improve conversion rate, but your average order value is less, then you may end up with less revenue.
5. Primary Purpose (Identify the Convertible) – Again, not all of your visitors come to your site to buy.  So, to get a true picture of how your website performs, you need to know why they come and if their purpose is satisfied.  This gives you a better picture of how your website is doing.

The challenge for you is to decide on metrics that are most important for your company to improve that will directly impact your bottom line. They are different for every business and site, so make sure you really think and consider the critical few that are most important so that you can have laser focus.

Step Two: What’s It Worth?

Now that you know what metrics will tell the story of whether your website is doing it’s job or not, you need to make sure that the outcomes are given economic value. If you don’t, you won’t be able to communicate what improving a metric will do for the business. If business owners and executives are going to disperse resources, they need to know how the efforts to improve visitor loyalty or support tickets submitted is going to affect the business in dollars and cents. If the outcomes that occur on your site are not credited with economic value, you can’t do this.

Even if the behavior is not an e-commerce transaction, give it value if it increases revenue or reduces cost for the business.  I might have 10,000 e-mail subscribers and they brought $100K in revenue last year to the company.  So, each subscriber is worth $10.  Some calculations may be more complicated, so get help from offline people and data if you need to.  Then, make sure you track what happens in the online channel to the best of your ability to be able to adjust for more accuracy going forward.

After you’ve started measuring what’s important and seeing how much it’s worth, you can then start analyzing this essential and extremely valuable data.  You can segment your data and look at visitors who only completed a certain action and see where they came from, what keywords they used, other common behavior they exhibit, etc.  This is where the gold is!

Google
Dec 2011: 66.1%
Nov 2011: 65.7%
Change: +0.4

January 2011: 64.6%
Change: +1.5

Yahoo
Dec 2011: 16.2%
Nov 2011: 16.3%
Change: -0.1

January 2011: 17.9%
Change: -1.7

Bing
Dec 2011: 13.8%
Nov 2011: 14.0%
Change: -0.2

January 2011: 12.8%
Change: +1.0

ASK
Dec 2011: 2.6%
Nov 2011: 2.6%
Change: 0.0

January 2011: 3.1%
Change: -0.5

AOL
Dec 2011: 1.4%
Nov 2011: 1.4%
Change: 0.0

January 2011: 1.6%
Change: -0.2

Data scoring techniques tend to change over time making past data inaccurate. As always, information here is for entertainment purposes only.

Source: comScore

I’ve read that the best way to win an argument is to tell a story, so I got one for you. Well, no. I’m not a good story teller, but I can throw together a pretty decent analogy.

Let’s say you have a pile of money and you need to “invest” it. As with any investment there is potential to fail. The question is, where to invest?

You have two options:

1) Invest the whole pile in one place.
2) Split it up and invest in multiple areas.

The saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” comes to mind. After all, when playing poker, you usually don’t go “all in” on the first hand. You spread it around, (hopefully) winning more as you go.

Online marketing isn’t all that much different. Diversification is a good thing (unless you have very little to diversify to begin with, then you have to build up to that). Before diversifying, you have to make sure you have enough to invest in one area to ensure its successful return on investment. If your budget is frog-butt tight, this post probably isn’t for you. If you have–or dream of having–a larger marketing budget, then keep reading. The good stuff is yet to come.

Diversifying Your Online Investment

I want to preface this section by repeating that you can only diversify your online marketing if you have enough budget to ensure the success of each. If you invest too little into SEO or PPC, ultimately your ROI will be a loooong time in coming, or you will find yourself outpaced by your competition that is investing in business growth.

Aside from the fact many businesses are not willing to invest enough in online marketing, the next biggest issue is having an unbalanced approach. Throwing your entire marketing budget at SEO may reap you HUGE rewards. But, you’re still missing out on a significant portion of business, and therefore profits, if you ignore PPC altogether. Similarly, if you throw everything at PPC and ignore SEO, again, you’re missing out on a lot of lower-cost conversions that SEO delivers.

Let’s not forget to mention that if all your money is in one and something goes bad, you have no secondary source to keep the revenue flowing! The key is to take a more balanced approach to your online marketing efforts. That’s where the 3-3-3 approach comes in. Or, as I like to call it, the 3-3-3 Online Investment Model. Catchy, isn’t it?

The 3-3-3 Online Investment Model

There are three key areas of online marketing investment:

• SEO – search engine optimization
• PPC – pay per click
• CSML – content, social media and link building

The idea here is to split your spending between these three areas pretty equally. If you have $30,000 to spend on marketing each month, as tempting as it may be, don’t throw it all into your PPC ad spend. It boggles me when I see companies spending that kind of money on PPC but only a couple thousand on SEO.

Why does this kind of discrepancy happen? I think mainly because PPC is so much more trackable than SEO. This makes PPC appear much more lucrative than SEO, when, in actuality it isn’t. PPC accounts for only about 1/3 of the total clicks in the search results. Plus, it usually isn’t as cost-efficient, delivering conversions at a higher costs than you’d get with SEO. This means that it would be wiser to put more money into SEO than PPC.

I wouldn’t recommend dumping PPC for SEO entirely, but splitting up your budget between the two is smart marketing. You could easily get away with throwing $20,000 of your $30,000 budget toward SEO. But this doesn’t fit the 3-3-3 model. Or does it?

In a way, it does. Often times, content marketing, social media and/or link building are wrapped into SEO. All three are tied closely together as linking is, or at least should be, a part of any successful SEO contract. The problem is, linking is difficult and time consuming so it can often get bypassed by the sexier on-page optimization aspects.

By using the 3-3-3 model, you are placing equal investment into linking as you are on-page optimization. Again, that is smart marketing. Take your $30,000 budget, put $10K to content, linking and social, $10K to SEO and leave the last $10K for PPC. That gives you a robost on-page, off-page and PPC marketing strategy that is drawing traffic and building reputation through not one, but three different sources, all adding to the value and overall growth of your business.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

We’ve talked about what makes a good metric to look at for your business.  But, you have to be careful here.  There is soooo much data wrapped up in what seems at times like an endless amount of possible metrics. If you are not careful, you will catch yourself wasting your time lost at sea with no idea how to get back home where you belong.  By “home” I mean those critical metrics that will measure what needs to change at this specific point in time for your online efforts to improve.  So, before you dive in and drown in data, the first and maybe most important thing you can do is determine where to focus your attention.  By doing this first, you create a map that will guide you to the right places to dive for those golden insights you so desperately need to make your next decisions for action.

This is what you want, right?  Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to take a few moments and bask in the glory of your achievements or sulk in the pain of your failures.  Both can be tremendous motivators.  But the bulk of your time looking at all the pretty charts, graphs, numbers and arrows should be to find out what to do next.  What should you do more of?  Less of?  Who should get a raise and who should get fired?  Remember, these decisions shouldn’t be faith-based initiatives.  Don’t let your opinion get in the way.  They should be backed by solid data that tells a story that leads you to conclusions that show you actions that give you results.

But, remember the data you’re looking at should be that which will tell you if what you were shooting for with your previous actions was accomplished or not.  This is how you and everyone else working with your site should be judged.  If what you were shooting for was to sell 20% more stuff than last year, who cares if visitors went up by 40% if it didn’t result in 20% more sales!  There’s a problem.  And who cares if visitors didn’t go up at all if sales went up by 20%!  Someone deserves some love.  Sure, the two will most likely be intimately tied together, but why worry about what doesn’t directly matter.  Focus on what matters and figure out what you can do to make it better.

My company uses the tag line “Velocitize Your Web Marketing”. So you know that when I saw the title of Arnie Kuenn’s book, Accelerate!, I had to read it. Well, that and (full disclosure) he asked me to write a chapter introduction. (He also mentions me on page 147, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Arnie is a good friend, but a lot of people I know write books and not all of them are good books. Arnie’s isn’t just good, it’s great! Accelerate! takes you through the ins and outs of online marketing from primarily a content development perspective and how it influences search, social and link building efforts.

If there is one chapter that really stood out (and no, it’s not the one I wrote an introduction to!) was Chapter 7: Sixteen Examples of Content for Your Business. No where else will you find a more complete list of ready-to implement content strategy options that will help you build a better website, reach your audience, and engage with your customers.

But that’s just one chapter, the rest of the book is chock full of suggestions, ideas, strategies and ways to implement a successful online marketing plan for your business. As Arnie puts it, in the Internet age, we are all publishers and successful businesses have to act like one. Accelerate! will show you how.

• Winning, Jack Welch
• Hard Goals: The Secret to Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, Mark Murphy
• Anointed for Business: How to Use Your Influence in the Marketplace to Change the World, Ed Silvoso
• The Truth about Leadership: The No-fads, Heart-of-the-Matter Facts You Need to Know, James Kouzes & Barry Posner
• Accelerate!: Move Your Business Forward Through the Convergence of Search, Social & Content Marketing, Arnie Kuenn

Entertainment

• Merciless, Robin Parrish
• The Bride Collector, Ted Dekker
• Trader of Secrets, Steve Martini

Personal

• How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday, Gerry Spence
• Change Agent: Engaging your passion to be the one who makes a difference
• The Rules of Engagement: The Art of Strategic Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Cindy Trimm
• 4 Keys to Hearing God’s Voice, Mark Virkler
• Tender Warrior: Every Man’s Purpose, Every Woman’s Dream, Every Child’s Hope, Stu Weber
• The Invisible War: What Every Believer Needs to Know about Satan, Demons, and Spiritual Warfare, Chip Ingram
• Courageous Living: Dare to Take a Stand, Michael Catt

Real Life

• Inside the Revolution: How the Followers of Jihad, Jefferson, and Jesus Are Battling to Dominate the Middle East and Transform the World, Joel Rosenberg
• The Obama Diaries, Laura Ingraham

Currently Reading

• New Testament Apocrypha, Ante-Nicene Fathers
• Havah: The Story of Eve, Tosca Lee
• Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, Karl Rove
• Decision Points, George W. Bush
• Rediscovering the Kingdom, Myles Monroe
• Hearing God’s Voice: Seven Keys to Connecting with God, Vern Heidebrecht

Books on deck

• Defining Conservatism:The Principles That Will Bring Our Country Back, Jonathan Krohn
• Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed: Leverage Resources, Establish Online Credibility and Crush Your Competition, Patrick Schwerdtfeger
• Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, Tim Groseclose
• Known and Unknown, Donald Rumsfield
• Brand Like A Rock Star: Lessons from Rock ‘n Roll to Make Your Business Rich and Famous, Steve Jones
• Bloom County: The Complete Library, Vol. 5 1987-1989, Berkeley Breathed
• The Twelfth Imam, Joel C. Rosenberg
• The Litigators, John Grisham
• The Tehran Initiative, Joel C. Rosenberg
• Corridor, Robin Parrish
• Micro, Crichton & Preston
• Forbidden, Dekker & Lee
• Nightmare, Robin Parrish
• Vigilante, Robin Parrish
• Six Action Shoes: A Brilliant New Way to Take Control of Any Business or Life Situation, Edward De Bono
• Think Big and Kick Ass: Make It Happen in Business and Life, Donald Trump
• Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media, Liana Evans
• Jesus, CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership, Laurie Beth Jones

• Uncomplex – If you want action, everyone involved in the decision-making must easily comprehend performance.
• Relevant – they must be measuring the success objectives that are unique to you and your website.
• Timely – Even the greatest metric in the world is useless if it takes nine days while your world changes every three days.
• Instantly Useful – you need to be able to find insights as soon as you look at it.

-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

Your business is different than everyone else’s, so why would you look at the same measurements of success as everyone else?  Everyone looks at visitors to their site, but what does that tell you about how your business is doing?  If you sell a high-end product and the only people coming to your site are those looking for a cheap solution, it doesn’t matter how far up and to the right that blue line goes for visitors, your business isn’t growing. You want to look at the metrics that will tell you if you are progressing with growth.  That’s why the most important step you can take toward success is identifying the metrics that will tell you if what you really want to happen for your business is happening or not.

What actions do you need your customers in order to achieve the site outcomes you desire?  Do they need to consume more content?  Do more of them need to make it to your product detail pages instead of bouncing off your home page?  Do you need to increase visitors from a certain website that sends high-converting traffic?  Do you need more conversions from PPC traffic?  What needs to happen on your site to get your business to where you want it to be?  Once you’ve got this down, you can now find out what metric will tell you if it’s happening or not.

If I need visitors to consume more content so that they can learn about how my product or service benefits them, my metrics for success might be Time on Site or Pageviews/Visit.  If more visitors need to make it to my product detail pages, I might make Product Detail Page Entrances on my site my chosen metric and ramp up my PPC and SEO to those pages.  If I need more conversions from PPC, I might use clicks and conversion rate as my primary metrics. Bottom line: what you spend your time looking at and trying to improve should align with the outcomes that will grow your business.

Google
Nov 2011: 65.7%
Oct 2011: 66.2%
Change: -0.5

January 2011: 64.6%
Change: +1.1

Yahoo
Nov 2011: 16.3%
Oct 2011: 16.3%
Change: 0.00

January 2011: 17.9%
Change: -1.6

Bing
Nov 2011: 14.0%
Oct 2011: 13.6%
Change: +0.4

January 2011: 12.8%
Change: +1.2

ASK
Nov 2011: 2.6%
Oct 2011: 2.6%
Change: 0.0

January 2011: 3.1%
Change: -0.5

AOL
Nov 2011: 1.4%
Oct 2011: 1.4%
Change: 0.0

January 2011: 1.6%
Change: -0.2

Data scoring techniques tend to change over time making past data inaccurate. As always, information here is for entertainment purposes only.

Source: comScore

As link builders, we have to help them have a broader perspective. It’s about building their online presence within their industry and in doing so, the quality links will follow. Unfortunately, it doesn’t boil down to a numbers game. It just isn’t that simple. If it were, everyone would be a link builder. What does it take for our clients to be successful?

Three Key Ingredients In A Successful Link Campaign

Time: The best link campaign isn’t a formula (amount of time = X number of links). The kind of links you can guarantee aren’t links of high quality or long-term value. Building relationships is one of the best ways to get valuable links. Another method of getting valuable links is through creating relevant content for your audience. These tactics take time to establish and produce but provide more merit in the long run.

If your campaign is built around a formula, then you are setting the client up for failure as soon as the campaign is over and the links aren’t continuing to be built at that rate.

Resources: How does the client currently garner leads? What are they doing that’s working? This is the best place to start because you can work from their strengths.

To dig further, ask questions to help assess what their resources are. Do they have linkable assets? Is there someone within the organization that is willing to share their knowledge and present themselves as an industry thought leader? Do they have white papers or a blog where they share industry-relevant content? Are they willing/able to give products out for review or for bloggers to use for a giveaway?

Communication: By having a conversation with the client to set goals at the beginning of a campaign, you can avoid some of the misunderstanding that results from having different expectations.

I also recommend communicating with the client throughout the campaign to keep them up-to-date on your efforts. Perhaps the initial goals that were set are intangible and need adjusted. Maybe, if you are a supernatural wunderkind like myself, you reach your goals soon into the campaign and need to create new ones.

Communication also allows your client to know where you are at and what you’ve been working on. If they have questions or concerns, they can ask you right then and you can address it. Plus, it helps build trust and a long-term relationship with your client.

Establishing Expectations From The Beginning

The best way to avoid “red flags” is to catch the signals from the beginning. If you are able to establish your expectations together with the client, then perhaps you will be on the same page at the start. Then your continued communication will help you stay on the same page. As this SNL skit demonstrates, it is vitally important to catch the warning signs and address them, so that both parties aren’t thinking, “They’re !@%$#& crazy!”

So, without a plan for how to create and optimize your video content, you may end up a Sisyphus. (Just saying that word makes me giggle like a junior high girl.) In Greek mythology, Sisyphus pushes a gigantic boulder up a hill every day only to watch it roll back down again. Every day. For eternity. That’s a rough gig.

Naturally, you don’t want to be a Sisyphus. So, before you run headlong into video production and online posting, consider these 10 tips that can give your video a chance – and perhaps even an edge – online.

1. Decide where video fits with your business goals.The worst thing you can do is spend lots of time and (if you’re going for quality) lots of money on a video, only to figure out that the topic doesn’t support any of the goals you need and want to accomplish. So, revisit your goals first, and then determine how a video might fit.
2. Figure out who your target audience is, what they like, what they want to know and what they might share.This is all part of building buyer personas, which is not exactly a new marketing concept. But, it is critical and applies to every aspect of your marketing plan. Creating personas takes time, effort and research, but it will pay off in the end.
3. Outline what would make your video successful, based on your goals.Guess what? Your video doesn’t need to have a million views to be successful! If it gets the number of shares within your industry that you want, brings potential buyers to your site or generates a certain number of leads, that may be exactly what you’re looking for.
4. Know your online influencers. Who would be most interested in your content and in a position to help you promote it? You need to do this research before or while you’re making a video. That way when it’s time to post, you’re ready to reach out and ask these influencers to help get the word out.
5. Create good content. No one has to get hit in the crotch with a baseball or do voice-overs with animals for your video to have success. Yes, humor is helpful, but informative and how-to videos also do extremely well online. After all, people turn to the Internet for information. So, don’t be afraid to give it to them!
6. When you upload a video, don’t forget to embed it in your blog. According to Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR, 44% of videos are discovered on blogs. (Let me add that I owe Mr. Jarboe thanks for several other great tips in this blog post.) This gives you the best of both worlds. If you upload to YouTube, your videos will be available on the world’s second most searched website, and the content is available and searchable on your own site. Plus, any time someone views the embedded video on your site, you get credit for that view on YouTube (counted as part of total views).
7. Optimize, optimize, optimize. Video content itself is not visible to search engines. That makes the text that surrounds each video very important.

   The title of the video becomes the page’s title tag. You have up to 100 characters, so make sure the title is both compelling and contains keywords. But, the sky’s the limit with the description. You’ve got 5,000 characters! Include lots of keyword-rich content, as well as links to other videos, your social media channels, customized landing pages and more. Make sure you use the http:// prefix; otherwise, it won’t become a link.

   If you’re not sure what keywords you should use, try YouTube’s keyword tool. Or, use the autocomplete algorithm that’s part of YouTube search. Start typing keywords into the YouTube search bar and see what other terms YouTube suggests. Tags should also be as detailed as possible. Be sure to use the keywords you want the video to rank for.

   Consider putting the URL you most want viewers to visit first in your description. That way even when the description is collapsed, the URL can be seen.

   Don’t forget to do all this for your channel settings, as well!

8. Take advantage of “recency” in YouTube’s algorithm, designed to help good new videos rise to the top. Jarboe says this recency factor lasts for about a week, so, before you post, make sure you’re ready to promote the video on a blog, on social media channels, in a e-newsletter and more. Don’t post and then decide to publicize later.
9. Experiment with YouTube’s captions and annotation features. They can help your video stand out in the crowd and provide a way to link to other videos, include a call to action and generally be more interactive.
10. Monitor what’s going on with your channel using YouTube insights. After all, at the end of the day, you need to know if your video accomplished what you wanted it to.

SEOs don’t design websites; they make your website more usable.

SEOs don’t build links; they build relationships.

SEOs don’t socialize your content; they communicate your value.

SEOs don’t spam keywords in content to rank; they integrate key words into content to sell.

SEOs don’t sell your products/services; they help you attract buyers for you to sell to.

SEOs don’t drive traffic; they drive customers.

SEOs don’t create conversions; they make your website more conversion friendly.

SEOs don’t create your sales message; they improve it for your audience.

SEOs don’t write your business plan; they help fulfill it.

SEOs don’t manipulate Google’s results; they make Google’s results relevant.

-Avinash Kaushik (@avinash), Web Analytics 2.0

Web data is easy to get at; and it can even be free.  Yes! That is awesomeness.  But, you know what’s not easy to get and is not free?  The insights you can get from the data that will result in wise decisions and actions for business growth.  Since this is the case, it just makes sense that you would spend way more on what will get you insights than you do on what gets you the data.  The bottom line is that you have to invest in talented people.  Without them, your data is useless (except you may FEEL good if the blue line goes up and to the right).

That is what you want, right?  To build your business?  Well then, you have to know what to do next to make it better.  Your opinion, although well-intentioned, may not be well-informed.  Well-intentioned decisions tend to cost more in time and money than you’ll ever invest in people that can give you well-informed insights.

If your goal is to grow your site’s effectiveness, then you need analysis ninjas that know what to do with all that data you’ve been gathering in your analytics tool.  Without them, you’re relying on faith alone.  Faith is good, but faith without data is dead.

I often wonder what it would be like if the power of the Internet was made available in regular, everyday life…

High Speed: Imagine having high-speed life capabilities! I could read an entire library or watch all the DVDs in my collection in a few hours. Long waits at the grocery store, DMV and drive-thru are no more! (Yes, I know the drive-thru is supposed to be fast, but is it fast enough? I think not!) Boring meetings are over in a jiffy, and long drives are handled in a few seconds. High-speed life lets you blast right through all the annoying things and spend time on the things you enjoy. Productivity and leisure would skyrocket at the same time!

Search: Finally I’d be able to find where I left my keys, where the TV remote has run off too and where I hid the good cookies I wanted for myself! Everything in my home and car is indexed and easily found with a simple query.

But let’s take that one step further. I want to be able to search my memory for that hidden nugget of information. Is that word you’re trying to use just on the tip of your tongue? One click and out it comes. Tired of running upstairs only to forget what you were going up there for? Submit your query and get real-time indexed results!

Everlasting Updates: Buy once and get a lifetime of free upgrades! Want to add that sun room to your house or want the 2012 model of your car? Just jack it into the internet and download the latest version. If your ex-girlfriend won’t give back the key to your house, download the latest security patch and the problem is solved.

Peer-to-Peer: Your best friend borrows a book, you can hand them your copy and still keep a copy for yourself. It’s called “sharing.” Love your neighbor’s garden? Tap into a peer-to-peer network and they can hand a copy of it over to you without losing a tomato! The potential here is limitless. You can share anything–home decorations, kitchen appliances, toiletries (no toilet paper, please), snacks, etc. No more keeping up with the Jones’. Now you just download peer-to-peer and you are the Jones’.

Spyware Protection: Giving someone the brushoff is easier than ever. No more annoying friends that won’t stop clinging to you and draining the life out of your spare time. No more ex-boyfriends calling you all hours of the day begging you to return. Equipped with personal spyware protection, you can be sure that “clingers” can be cleaned off with the click of a button. Wipe them out of your system to keep them from disrupting your social life ever again.

Spam Blocker: Eliminate unwanted advice from friends or family. All bad advice is rerouted to your spam box before it ever reaches your ears while allowing good advice to sail right through. Tough decisions become much easier as the reliability of the advice you receive increases dramatically. And if you wonder why you never hear from a certain friend anymore, you’ll know they were probably just spam anyway!

Virus Protection: Forget about the flu shot. (Shots hurt!) Now you have a built-in virus scan and protection. Coughing, aching, sniffling, sneezing, colds, flu, diarrhea, food poisoning, carcinogens and all other ailments are kept out. Just remember to run a full-system scan every day and keep up-to-date and you’ll never have to (legitimately) call in sick again!

Bug Reports: Everybody makes mistakes, but now you can notify and be notified whenever “it” happens. No more waiting for long-term consequences to catch up to you; correct the mistake immediately and recover quickly! You can submit and receive bug reports 24/7 for all areas of your life. Be warned: you may not want your faults pointed out… that’s just the cost of being able to do the same!

Back Button: Ever wish you could undo that mistake or go back and start over? The “Back” button lets you do just that. Go back a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, or all the way to the beginning and start fresh. Make all new decisions and, by all means, don’t make the same mistakes twice!

We often don’t appreciate how truly awesome the web is. Things are fast and easy, and when something crashes, nobody dies! (Though you may want to kill someone!) Someday real-life might be this simple, but until then, we’ll just have to do things the “old-fashioned” way.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Google
Oct: 65.38%
Sept: 66.12%
Change: -0.74

January 2011: 67.95%
Change: -2.57

Yahoo
Oct: 15.39%
Sept: 15.27%
Change: +0.12

January 2011: 14.62%
Change: +0.77

Bing
Oct: 13.23%
Sept: 12.8%
Change: +0.43

January 2011: 12.81%
Change: +0.42

Data scoring techniques tend to change over time making past data inaccurate. As always, information here is for entertainment purposes only.

Source: Hitwise

The question is, what do you do with your keyword lists once you’ve compiled them?

Just as there is no shortage of good keyword tools, there is also no shortage of metrics that you can use to determine the value of any given keyword. A few that tend to top our keyword selections lists are:

• Search volume: How many searches per day or month are being performed for each phrase. The higher the volume, the greater the opportunity to drive traffic to your site.

• Search competition: How many sites are displayed when performing a search using a keyword.

• Title competition: How many sites are displayed when performing a search for the keyword only in title tags.

• Direct Competition: Whether a specific competitor ranks for any particular keyword.

• KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index): A score based on how often a keyword is searched balanced against keyword competition.

Each of these metrics provides valuable insight, but they ultimately should not be used in selecting keywords. Stats like these can tell us what is happening with the keywords, but it can’t tell us why. And unless you know why something is, it’s impossible to make a smart decision about it.

Here is what the stats don’t tell us:

• Search volume: How many of these searches are actually relevant? Will the searcher find what their search intended on your site?

• Search competition: Are the sites ranking for these keywords legitimate competition? Are they truly optimized sites?

• Title competition: Are these competitors that cannot be defeated? How many of them will be easy to topple?

• Direct Competition: Do you know if your competitors are getting any value from ranking for these keywords?

• KEI: Does a competitive score mean you shouldn’t try to rank for the keyword? Is there long-term value in trying?

Looking at keywords in terms of volume or difficulty is a good measure for setting expectations in terms of time and budget it will take to get your site ranked. Looking at whether your competitors rank for that phrase only tells you whether your competitors rank for a phrase. For all you know they have performed zero keyword research, or went after a phrase because someone else did. That’s not a good signal by itself.

The problem with looking at any of the signals and data above is it does not tell you anything about searcher intent or whether you can convert those keywords into sales. It’s good data to have, but not the data you need to make good keyword selection decisions.

To do that, you need to apply this simple three-rule test for keyword selection:

1. Is the keyword relevant to your target audience? There are a lot of keywords that are seemingly relevant, but when you look closer at visitor intent, you find that the searcher is looking for something different entirely. Not even all “industry relevant” keywords will be relevant to your products or services in particular. Be sure to analyze visitor intent for each of your keywords. Unfortunately, the only tool that can do that is your brain.
2. Will the keyword deliver traffic? This question cannot be answered until the question above is. Not all traffic is the same, so you need to make sure it’s targeted traffic. Don’t let high search volume bias you. Even low volume keywords can deliver a fantastic amount of targeted traffic when combined with other long-tail phrases.
3. Will the traffic sent by the keyword convert? You can take your best guess here, but only time and analytics will tell. Every keyword you invest any significant amount of time in optimizing for SEO or PPC should be able to convert your visitors into customers. Spend more time investing in keywords with higher conversion rates.

The simplified version of this three-rule test is: Relevancy, Traffic and Conversions. Every good keyword should be able to satisfy each of these satisfactorily. If they are lacking anywhere, then the value of the keyword will also be lacking.

You can select relevant keywords that drive traffic, but if you can’t convert them, maybe it’s not as relevant as you thought. You can select relevant traffic that converts, but if the traffic isn’t there. Conversions will be sparse. If you select high-volume keywords that occasionally convert, but without the relevance, the conversion rates will be low and your effort will be high. Not a good mix for productivity!

There may be some wiggle-room between each keyword, but ultimately, you only want to select keywords that will deliver performance on all three levels. If not, then you may just be wasting your time! The best keywords are keywords that you have determined to be relevant and have tested to get results. Nothing else really matters.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Google
Oct 2011: 66.2%
Sep 2011: 65.4%
Change: +0.8

January 2011: 64.6%
Change: +1.6

Yahoo
Oct 2011: 16.3%
Sep 2011: 17.2%
Change: -0.9

January 2011: 17.9%
Change: -1.6

Bing
Oct 2011: 13.6%
Sep 2011: 13.4%
Change: +0.2

January 2011: 12.8%
Change: +0.8

ASK
Oct 2011: 2.6%
Sep 2011: 2.6%
Change: 0.0

January 2011: 3.1%
Change: -0.5

AOL
Oct 2011: 1.4%
Sep 2011: 1.4%
Change: 0.0

January 2011: 1.6%
Change: -0.2

Data scoring techniques tend to change over time making past data inaccurate. As always, information here is for entertainment purposes only.

Source: comScore

There is a reason people build businesses in cities surrounded by people, rather than in a desert surrounded by cactus! You need people to market to, and you need customers coming in your door. The success of your business relies on how well you market your product or service first, and second by how well you deliver it. Very few businesses survive on word of mouth alone. But what many small business owners fail to realize is that while marketing is everything, everything you do is marketing!

Everything you do, as a small business, has an impact on your marketing message and ability to get that message out to your customer base. How/whether you answer your phones, how you reply to email messages, what you say on Twitter/Facebook, the presentation of your website, and your ability to produce satisfied customers all play a role in your ongoing marketing efforts.

How are you perceived?

My company helps business owners build and execute their web marketing strategies. But all too often, many are missing even the most fundamental marketing and common-sense business development components. We can help them online, but lacking the offline aspects, we are simply attempting to fill a bucket that has holes in it.

Perception matters. If your potential customer’s perception of you, true or not, is less than they expect, you’re going to have trouble selling them. Would you trust a mechanic with a poorly tuned vehicle? A lawyer who drives a Yaris? A contractor with a run-down office? A landscaper with an overgrown lawn?

You might, but I guarantee you’d think twice before you do. None of these things demonstrate how well any of these business owners do their job, but the perception is, if they can’t take care of themselves, how can you trust them to take care of you?

When performing link building for our clients, they are often picky about where we get links from. So are we, but they often want to get links only from high-caliber sites, when their site is somewhere below that. In link building, people will generally only link to site’s of equal or higher caliber than themselves. If you want a link from a high-caliber site, you have to be one. Otherwise, take what you can get from those below you!

The little things matter the most

Businesses purchase online marketing because they want to increase sales. But if the SEO is doing its job but sales don’t follow, there may be something else at play. Lack of business success doesn’t always fall on the marketer’s shoulders. In fact, such woes may directly be caused by how the business is being run.

The SEO’s job doesn’t include running your business. There are a lot of things that fall outside the SEO’s area that can make or break your business success, and even your search engine rankings!

As an SEO, we routinely try to help our clients in areas that fall far outside the SEO box. We’ll provide feedback on design, programming and presentation, just to name a few. We want our customers to succeed, and sometimes that means we have to help in areas that we were not necessarily hired for.

Everything matters, and when it comes to business success, everything should be on the table for a discussion on how to improve your ROI. If your SEO thinks your design isn’t great, it may be worth discussing in greater detail, even if you love it. There might be a reason they hate it that goes beyond personal preference. If your SEO provides a recommendation on how something looks or appears on the website, it many worth noting, even if you can’t change it right away.

Little things can create big perceptions. Especially when it comes to usability issues. It’s not just website design, it’s also communication, problem resolution, response times and a whole lot more.

A picture on your website may be worth a thousand words, but perception is worth 1001. You are what you’re perceived to be. That’s true whether you believe it or not.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.