Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

Metrics That Lie to You: Average Position (Part 2)

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:41:21 -0600

by Mike Fleming

We're taking a look at how the "average position" metric lies to you (or more accurately, is misunderstood by you). In part one, we studied the reasons behind this and why distributions in Google Webmaster Tools is your sweet release for truly understanding your organic search position listings.

Let me wrap this up by showing you how to examine distributions in your AdWords account, as well. This is really important because, if you believe campaign/ad group/keyword/ad performance equals "My click-through rate/conversion rate/cost per conversion is at an average position of 3," you're not getting the real story. Plus, an average number is not actionable. But, if you segment positioning into distributions, you can now see performance differences in different positions on the page, draw some conclusions and take some action.

With your PPC ads, there are two places that provide you with this distribution data. First, in the AdWords interface, you can segment by Top vs. Other ad positioning...

This allows you to see how all of your metrics distribute across top-of-the-page positions (those that show above organic search results) and other positions (to the right or below organic results). Why is this important? A couple reasons...

The average position metric you see is not segmented. So, if you have an average position of 1, that doesn't mean you showed in the first spot at the top of the search results above organic listings. It means you won the first spot in the auction every time. The difference? You could have been the first ad listed on the right side of search results because no ads earned a top listing. That's right, the average position is the auction position and doesn't tell you anything about actual position on the page. For that, you have to use the segmentation feature. But, even then, it only shows you top vs. side and not a breakdown, position by position.
It's all about the money. Of course, top positions cost relatively more than others. While they get the majority of the clicks, this doesn't necessarily mean it's the best place for you to be. If you look at the screenshot above closely, you can see that the campaign shown has more conversions in less clicks and for less cost in side positions than in top positions in Google results. That's good to know, right? So far, lower positions are better for this advertiser.

One other place to see an even more detailed look at position distribution is in your analytics tool. For example, in the advertising section of Google Analytics, there's a Keyword Positions report that looks like this...

When you click on each keyword in the list (I have #3 highlighted), you see where your ads have shown in terms of position on the page. But, every good Web marketer knows that you can't look at lonely metrics. There must be context! See the drop downs at the top of the columns? You can change metrics to give context to performance. You might get most of your visits at the top, but how is bounce rate or conversion rate or per-visit value! Now we're learning something. Now we can place our ads where they'll make the most money. Brilliant!

While average position can certainly be used for general comparisons on the surface levels, it's no good for actionable insights. But, now you know and can manage your campaign better.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

The Philosophy of the Penguin and its Sense of Smell

Sun, 20 May 2012 18:46:09 -0600

by Todd Bailey

I haven't been in Google back-rooms. I have never met the Penguin personally. But I can make observations. It seems the pursuit of truth and honesty is one of the underlying messages taken from the ordeal.

I have discussed the recent update with many web masters and business owners and seen sites hit by the update. Both for the reasons stated in all the recent press surrounding Penguin as well as sites that do not fall within the filters criteria. Many result pages show empty sites and spam sites still. I think we are on to something here.

And the Penguin update name doesn't just come from another cute black and white bird, but is more closely related to a penguins sense of smell. Algorithmically, the filter uses its "sense of smell" to associate authority (or lack their of) related to the site much like penguins use their sense of smell to identify their partner or offspring. As we know of the penguin, they set off into the ocean in search of food to feed their partner when they return. How does a penguin find its partner, navigating its way through the masses of spam when it returns, with it's sense of smell.

The Market of Google
The 'market' of Google houses regulations. There are particular 'ways' in which Google wants advertisers to use its 'marketplace.' The resulting abuse is not a surprise; it's natural for advertisers to test limits when it comes to making money. However, those who decided to go too far were penalized. There is such a thing as 'too' far; and, there is an associated level of expectation for people to adhere to 'the lines.'

Did Yahoo's Scott Thompson adhere to the lines? One can argue for the 'not entirely' side. To be blunt, he lied about his schooling. He danced around the lines to get the job. Did he have 'bad intent' toward any entity? It's very unlikely; but, smearing the lines is an offense in itself. Despite apologies, Thompson was ousted from Yahoo.

Another high-profile person is in the news this weekend too. Roger Clemens, the great retired pitcher of the major leagues, was on trial in the US District Court for lying to Congress in 2008 regarding conversations related to steroid usage. Another gentleman says he saw Mr. Clemens use steroids on several occasions. Mr. McNamee states he injected Clemens with hormone-influencing drugs in 1998, 2000, and 2001.

Mr. Clemens is not the only baseball or sports star of this generation to be accused of using illicit methods to physically produce satisfying sports results. The desire to perform well is not uncommon. However, the desire to produce must adhere to the regulations hosted by professional sports. Otherwise, the players are making transgressions and must be dealt with accordingly. Penalties not only punish transgressors but send message to others. It reinforces the integrity of the lines.

The Philosophy of the Penguin
The Penguin's philosophy is not as terrorizing as the sentiment of lost rankings, resources, and money. We need lines. Otherwise, there would be no structure or order to allow for success or failure; without the lines, there would be no direction for the notion of progress to follow.

Are those, affected by Penguin, malicious souls? Is Scott Thompson a horrible person? Should those who cheered for Clemens as a player, now jeer the man who may have lied about steroid usage, about evading the lines?

It's a philosophical question I can't answer for everyone; but, maybe it's better for us to separate the crimes from persons and to understand the 'crimes' stemmed from desires to do well, to prosper. Those desires are not wicked. However, the notion of bending, stretching, and ultimately dismissing the lines cannot go unnoticed or punished. Otherwise, we tamper with the intrinsic value of success, why the 'desires' to do well exist in the first place. In theory, the Penguin secretly champions those playing within the lines. The Penguin's philosophy is a righteous and needed one.

The Reunion of Friends
And with the return of the penguin from the ocean I am mostly reminded of animated features with happy endings of reunions between partners. Hollywood loves a good reunion and rewards it by publishing it when they read the script. But what of the lost penguins who are affected by the masses? What of the sites that have been plagued by this update? Are we that far off from an Occupy Googleplex with chants of "No Taxation Without Representation?"

Hold on, let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Google I know is a for profit company looking to provide its users with the best content in its results through its continued inovation. Although the Penguin Update doesn't look at content on a site, only the sites linking to it.

So we await the next refresh (likely) of the penguins adventure out to sea and when he returns to find his mate this time around we can anticipate one of those animated classics. Lets just hope it's not another Final Fantasy flop.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

A High Search Volume Doesn't Mean It's the Right Keyword for You

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:36:07 -0600

by Nick Stamoulis

One of the most common mistakes I see website owners and marketers make when launching their first SEO campaign is that they let search volume dictate which keywords they should target. I can completely understand the rationale behind their thinking--if more people are searching for keyword X that means more visitors for my site which means more money for my company. Unfortunately SEO is not that cut and dry. The higher of a search volume a keyword has the more competition there is for it, which means it's going to be much harder and take a lot longer to rank well in the search engines for. It's also important to remember that just because a particular keyword has a high search volume that doesn't mean it's the right keyword for you.

For instance, "IT services" is a wildly popular keyword with over 45 million searches each month. However, "IT services" is also an incredibly broad keyword and might not be the most accurate keyword for your website. What kind of IT services does your business offer? Do you cater to small businesses or global enterprises? Do you offer IT consulting services or maybe you specialize in certain software platforms? Are you local service provider or do you have clients all over the country? More specific keywords like "managed IT services" (which still gets over 60k searches each month) might send less traffic to your site, but they will also drive a more targeted visitor. The more targeted the visitor the better chance you have of converting them.

Broad keywords with large search volumes are typically used at the beginning of someone's buy cycle when they are just beginning to research their options. They want to cast as wide a net as possible and will subsequently narrow it down the more they learn. Someone who searches for "IT services" at the beginning of their buy cycle might end up looking for "small business IT service providers in New York" by the time they are ready to buy. While targeting "IT services" might drive more traffic to your site, you're not driving the quality traffic you need to grow your online business.

Think about it like this--let's say that after thorough keyword research you added 20 new long tail keywords to your website. Even if each of those keywords only drives 5 unique visitors to your site each month that's 100 more highly-qualified visitors that have never heard of your brand or been to your website before. Those 100 visitors are much more likely to convert because they found your site through a very specific search phrase. On the flip side, a visitor that found your site through a broader keyword (even though they can still convert) might not be the kind of visitor you are looking for. For instance, an SEO client of mine had visitors finding their site by searching for "software." While it's great that they were getting any traffic from such a broad and competitive keyword, "software" could really mean just about anything. The majority of the visitors that came to their site from "software" weren't good leads for their company and clogged up the sales funnel.

Many site owners think that keyword research is a one-and-done process, but that's not the case! No one is required to get their keyword selection right the first time (it took me years to really hone in the right keywords for my site and my audience!) but you shouldn't assume that the keyword with the highest search volume is automatically the best one for your site.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Those Who Don't Learn SEO are Doomed to Repeat It

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:10:16 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who's left?

Repete? Ok, Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who's left?

Repete? How about we just move on...

In marketing, when something works it gets repeated and repeated again and again. Never letting a good campaign go to waste, imitators will jump on board and drive it into the ground until it's no longer effective.

We've seen this with the Got Milk? campaigns. It wasn't long before we started seeing imitators touting got sand, got rice, got mold, got Jesus and even got poop! (Like, who doesn't?)

The same thing happens with TV and movies. Someone breaks an "edginess" barrier and it's soon a race to see how soon it can be topped without losing advertisers or getting crushed by the FCC. It's hard to believe there was once a time when it was taboo to say "damn" in a theatrical movie, or that depicting a married couple in the same bed was just not something you did on TV!

It's inevitable that yesterday's "big thing" is today's normal thing.

What's new is old again

Online marketing runs on the same principles. While solid SEO and link-building concepts remain universal, there are a number of strategies of years past that no longer work today. Why? Because they have been done to death, rendering them almost completely ineffective.

Remember reciprocal link pages? Mass article submissions? Mass directory submissions? Comment spamming? Link wheels? These are all but virtually dead, dying or soon to be declining link-building strategies that have been used, abused and discarded in the cyber junkpile of once successful SEO strategies.

All this shows the danger of jumping on any single "trick" when pursuing the holy grail of SEO: search engine rankings. These tricks often turn into nothing more than short-term gimmicks, and sites fall down just as quickly as they rose up in the search results.

In online marketing, there are many paths to the same goal. Many will work for most, some may work for all, and others only work for a period of time. Many business owners find one strategy that works and they stick to it, even long past its usefulness. Not every marketing strategy works 100% the time. Those that put all their marketing eggs into a single basket find themselves with egg on their faces when that one strategy comes crashing to the ground with the changing tide of online marketing strategies.

But I get it. We do what we are comfortable with and venturing outside of that is the unknown. The unknown means taking risks and possibly experiencing losses. But it also means possible rewards, and that's what businesses need to be looking at.

Developing long-term strategies that get results

In any kind of marketing, its good to have multiple strategies at play at any given time. Putting aside the whole concept of marketing to specific customer personas, it's not a good idea to put all of your time, money or effort into a single marketing approach. I can easily make an argument for investing not only in SEO and link building, but also in social media, PPC, content, analytics, etc.

Focusing all your marketing efforts onto a single avenue of growth can be effective for a time. However, marketing diversification gives you more opportunity to be even more effective.

If you're limiting your marketing efforts to one or even two avenues, it might be time to branch out. Look at other successful marketing avenues and see how you can venture out a bit. Look at specific tactics and campaigns and see what makes sense for both short and long-term success.

Sometimes it takes trial and error to find strategies that work. Your first attempt isn't always the best attempt, and it should never be your final attempt. You can always piggyback on what others are doing, just don't mimic exactly. Use others' success to build successful campaigns unique to you.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Hello Again Marketing

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:43:14 -0600

by Todd Bailey

Have you lost sight of a well-loved service or product? People are creatures of repetition. Usually we commit when we find a service or product we enjoy using. Recently, Ryan Buddenhagen wrote a post on brand ability to bring back old services and products.

The notion is not very novel. Blockbuster movies enjoy reviving old heroes and comics. Food producers sometimes reintroduce a retired food or beverage. The Eagles once did a "Hell Freezes Over" tour... Speaking of music, you may catch sight of modern-day hipsters wearing vintage CBGB shirts. The East Village club, opened from 1973 to 2006, was a bastion of punk-rock music.

Investors now plan to reinvent the club, starting with a music festival, then plan on finding a new NY location for the old club at a downtown locale. "We're going to recreate a moment in time," admits one investor. The four-day festival is planned to start on July 5 and host over 300 bands. The spread of the festival is vast, spanning more than 30 locations.

I'm looking forward to tracing how the reinvention of the CBGB sentiment and club fares. The story and Ryan's post introduce interesting points. Why not bring back coveted services and products of old?

It could be a great branding and marketing operation; or, it could fall flat on its face. Here are a few things to consider if interested in internal re-introductions:

Why Retire?
What was the reason for retiring the service/product? Was it due to consumer disinterest or a new internal direction? The latter choice may have been a mistake. It's okay. All businesses make them. Sometimes businesses make decisions and then find more intelligence is elucidated after the fact. Think about revisiting former decisions.

Re-sample
Most run tests before fully introducing a service/product to the market. Don't concentrate on how a former product/service fared then. Think about if something can work well into your business model now. The decision could be a good idea; but, you don't want to reengage with full force.

Ask Them
There's never been an easier time to ask consumers questions and get feedback in real time. You may think a former product/service reintroduction; yet, when asking consumers, none of them agree. It's about them; never forget that. A brand can simply write a Facebook post, blog post, or tweet to consumers, asking their opinion on a reintroduction. Even if they don't like the idea, they'll appreciate your brand thought enough to ask them.

Updates
To steer the concept in another direction; don't dismiss profits which can come from a presently popular service or product. Think about Apple's iPad; it's on its third iteration. Apple continues to make upgrades and improve its product. As referenced, people are creatures of habit. Sometimes an upgrade to an existing product/service is better than an entirely new entity; because, consumers may already have emotional connections to the original. There's no reason to interrupt that connection.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Metrics That Lie to You: Average Position (Part 1)

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:04:35 -0600

by Mike Fleming

I wouldn't call the "average position" metric pointless, but it's definitely lying to you. Most people approach this metric with a natural misunderstanding. It's natural to think, "This is the average position that my organic listing or paid ad shows up at in a search for this keyword." Sorry, but no. How could a tool just flat out lie to you? Well, the tool isn't lying to you. It's your understanding of what that metric is communicating that is lying to you. In a recent article titled, "The big lie of AdWords average position," light is shed upon this subject. But, this goes beyond AdWords to organic search and many other applications in life as well.

The temptation to use averages goes along with the fact that we really like to have one number that will represent overall performance. It's easier. The problem is that averages don't really tell you anything about what's going on. There are a few reasons for this...

We use mean averages - These averages take a total and divide it by the number of participants. The reason this is suboptimal is that you could get an average position of 3, but you don't know if you showed up in position 3 every time or split equally between positions 1 and 5 or any other combination of possibilities.
Only impressions are calculated - Let's say there are 3 searches on your keyword. In the results, your listing shows in positions 1, 5 and 15 respectively. What's your average position? 1+5+15 = 21/3 = 7. Your average position is 7. But, this isn't the number that you see. You see an average position of 3. Why? Only impressions count in the calculation. In the third search in our example, the searcher never went to the 2nd page. So, even though you earned a position of 15, it wasn't included in the calculation. To get a true average position, your impression share would have to be 100%. If it's not, then all the times your listing or ad came up in search results but was not seen by the searcher are not figured in.
All listings are counted, not just your top listing - If there's one search, and the searcher views your ad or organic listing on the first page and then clicks through to the 2nd page and sees a different ad and/or a different organic listing on that page also, that's one search with multiple impressions. If you were in position 1 and then position 11, your average position would be 6. This is why you might see that number in Google Webmaster Tools or AdWords for a keyword, even though when you do an organic search you see your listing in position 1. Of course, it's never that way because, much of the time, only your #1 listing is seen and not your #11.

The Solution

Instead of looking at averages, look at distributions. This is where the insights are found. Let's take a look at organic listings in this post and then we'll review how we find the solution for this for paid ads in the next post.

If you're looking at the keywords your site has shown in Google Webmaster Tools, you'll see something like this...

For the search term "pole position," our average position is 14, but if you click on the term, it takes you to this page...

What you see here is a distribution of your impressions by page and by position in search results for organic listings. Even better would be if they let you click through the page and gave you a distribution for each specific page as well, but of course you can assume that your top page for impressions is the one ranking the highest in results. So, you can see in my example that, even though my average position for the term "pole position" says 14, my true rank for most impressions is 6 to 10. That's a big difference; especially when we're talking about the difference between being on the 1st or 2nd page of results.

In fact, we've got a client right now who's average position for their top keyword says 4.3. But, this is deceptive. They're actually #1 for this keyword, but other pages also show up in the rankings as searchers go through them. So, instead of spending our time and energy trying to reach the #1 position, we've moved on to other priorities.

Now that you know what's truly going on, you can better strategize for improvement. By taking a look at exactly which pages are ranking where and who's right above you in results that you need to overtake, you can look at comparative metrics of your closest competitors and set goals accordingly.

Next time, we'll look at how to get the true story about your paid ads when it comes to positioning.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

The Right Message May Not Be So Right for Your Audience

Fri, 04 May 2012 10:05:16 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

The number one key to your business growth is crafting a message that speaks to your audience. Having the right message builds up your strengths and helps you overcome any deficiencies you might have.

McDonald's doesn't make the best hamburgers in the world, but they do have a great bit of messaging that speaks to their target audience. It's that message, not the hamburgers, that makes Micky D's the number one fast food restaurant in America.

While substance is important in order to have a great message, the message itself helps establish the perception of your substance. Much to my chagrin, my kids would rather go to McDonald's over Burger King or Wendy's. They don't love the food as much as the box the food comes in, and not even close to as much as that toy inside the box.

McDonald's has the right message for my kids. But I'm the wrong audience for that message, though I'm a sucker at giving my kids a fast-food treat of their choice! So, McDonald's has a different message for me. Primarily, it's a message to give my kids a fast-food treat of their choice!

The audience matters as much as the message

If you are putting the "right" message in front of the wrong audience, you're still going to fail. Each audience needs a "right" message of its very own.

Several years ago, I wrote a letter to my U.S. Senator expressing my disapproval with his position on a particular issue. About a week later, I received a letter thanking me for expressing my support for him on this issue. Huh?!

The letter went on to list out all the reasons why "we" were right about the issue. The problem is, I didn't think "we" were right. I was, he wasn't!

If you own or market a business, you may feel you have the right message. And maybe you do. But that may be the wrong message for someone else who is, say, skeptical about doing business with you.

My Senator may have been able to convince me I was wrong, but because he gave me the wrong message, it fell on deaf ears. If his message was right, he went about it all wrong for the audience of me.

The right message for me would have been to acknowledge my viewpoint, sympathize with it, find areas of common ground and only then make the case for the merits of the issue. That message would have had a higher chance of persuading me.

How to craft the right message for any audience

Not everyone is convinced you are the right company to do business with. The message you use for your current customers is not the same message for customers who have yet to do business with you. You must craft a distance message for each audience.

How, when and where you communicate your message plays a significant role in your company's success. Web businesses have a number of unique communication opportunities to get their message out: website, telephone, emails, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. Each can play a significant role in your company's success.

When you communicate to your customers, potential customers or even skeptics, you can easily craft the right message, only to find that it's the wrong message for that particular segment of your audience. Current customers need to be addressed differently from prospective customers. Interested parties should be addressed differently from those who are not interested, but can still be convinced.

Each marketing forum provides a unique opportunity to get your message out to a different audience. Whichever forum(s) you use, target different segments of your audience with language that reaches them specifically. In business communications, the one-size-fits-all approach just doesn't work. I'm sure you've got THE right message, but in reality, you need the right message for each target audience.

Follow me+ at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Don't Just Build Links, Become a Thought Leader

Thu, 03 May 2012 15:20:31 -0600

by Nick Stamoulis

I think we can all agree that content marketing is an indispensable component of SEO and Internet marketing in general. Great content gets shared, which in turn creates inbound links to your website, which helps your site do better in the search engines, which drive more traffic to your site and so forth and so on. But too often site owners are just looking at content as a link building tactic. In reality, the content you are creating for your SEO, content marketing and social media marketing campaigns can serve a much greater purpose---it can turn your brand into a thought leader.

Here are 4 tips to becoming a thought leader in your industry:

1. Start producing more content.
If you are only writing one blog post a week, while a good place to start for many site owners, your solitary piece of content is not even a drop in the bucket when you compare it to how much information is being churned out online every day. Even in a relatively small niche, your content has to compete with blog posts, articles, white papers, videos, podcasts and more. One piece of content is probably not going to make your brand stand out for long, even if you are able to write a piece of content that captures the attention of your audience. You need to give your target audience a reason to remember you, check out your blog a couple times a week, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social profiles and so forth---and that means you need to product more content. If you want to become a thought leader, you have to consistently produce great content proving you deserve to be recognized.

2. Don't be afraid of giving away too much free information.
In my opinion, one of the worst things a company could do for their SEO is write a bunch of great, juicy, quality content and then lock it behind a login. I know that many companies are concerned about giving away too much information for free (why buy the cow, right?) but the truth is you have to prove to your audience that you are an expert---and this means providing them with relevant, useful information. Don't expect your reputation to mean much to an organic visitor that has never heard of your brand before. You have to prove yourself to them and your content is the best way to do that.

I'm not saying you can't put some of your content behind a login (or a lead form), but the majority of the content you produce needs to be openly published so both the search engines AND your customers can find and use it. Think about it--who are the thought leaders in your industry? Chances are most of them have blogs where they talk about the latest industry trends, best practice tips and so forth. They are willingly sharing expert advice, which helps further establish themselves as industry thought leaders!

3. Specialize in something.
Too often most people (especially marketers) feel the need to become jack-of-all-trades. I can understand wanting to know how different factions play into your niche, especially when they influence each other in some way (like how social media or content marketing works with SEO), but in order to become a true thought leader you need to be exceptionally good at one thing and know that industry inside and out. In order to provide people with valuable insights and not just general advice, you need to understand the subtleties of your niche; seen it all, heard it all, done it all. Thought leaders are, amazingly enough, leaders in their fields mainly because they know it better than anyone else.

4. Never stop learning.
A thought leader has to have their finger on the pulse of their industry; what's coming down the pipeline, how are customer behaviors changing, what industry trends are shifting and so forth. In order to stay ahead of the curve (or at least keep pace with the pack) you need to know what is going on! Read other industry blogs, attend conferences, follow other experts on social networking sites--just keep yourself immersed in the way things are and where they are going. Getting stuck on the way things used to be means you'll soon be an expert of old knowledge and no longer a thought leader.

Your content is worth so much more in the long run than a few inbound links! Make sure you are working it to it's full potential.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Pinterest's Five Year Plan

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:46:41 -0600

by Todd Bailey

Recently, the entire Web community has been abuzz about Pinterest. Although the upstart social network is still in the open beta testing phase, it has overtaken LinkedIn as America's third largest social site, according to Experian Hitwise. At present, Pinterest is reaching millions of worldwide users per month and since January, has held the distinction of being the site to break ten million unique hits in the shortest timeframe. Pinterest is a social networking phenomenon that shows no signs of diminishing, but is there long-term viability within the Pinterest brand?

Pinterest does provide a unique approach to image sharing and could potentially give businesses a forum to display their products. Thus far, some companies have already attempted to utilize the site for this purpose, but some are still skeptical about investing much time or money into Pinterest-specific marketing efforts. As a marketing tool, Pinterest could prove useful on a long-term basis if the company is willing to embrace the concept.

Some users are concerned that advertisements within Pinterest's aesthetically pleasing design may interfere with the layout, which is one of the site's strengths. However, as with Facebook and Twitter, the implementation of "sponsored pins" could generate substantial revenue for Pinterest, while giving companies more incentive to advertise on the site without compromising its design.

Only time will tell if Pinterest has considered advertising and marketing offerings as part of their five year plan. The network is likely to evolve, similar to its competitors. Perhaps Pinterest's greatest asset is the "organic" feel of the site. Browsing through the online pinboard is enjoyable for its users. It also creates a "sticky" environment, which keeps users on the site for longer periods of time. Sticky pages are desirable for online marketers and advertisers, as they typically ensure greater ad visibility. Pinterest could definitely become a great long-term investment for Internet marketers, if the company is willing to utilize them and the profitability they will offer.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Revisiting Your Onsite SEO

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:35:02 -0600

by Nick Stamoulis

Every six months or so, it's important for site owners to revisit their onsite SEO. While many may think that onsite SEO is a set-it-and-forget-it process, the truth is that even "static" websites aren't 100% fixed. Even if you didn't undergo a major website overhaul in the last 6 months, chances are you tweaked a page of content here and there, added a few more links, tested new call-to-actions and so forth. Revisiting your onsite SEO will help ensure these small changes are all in working order and your site is up-to-date.

Check for broken links and missing pages.
Nothing kills the user experience faster than broken links and missing pages. You don't want to give a visitor any reason to abandon your site, so it's imperative that your site is easy to navigate. Did you delete any pages of content since the last time you looked at your onsite SEO? Were any links (both internal and inbound) properly 301 redirected? Remember that a 301 redirect tells the search engines that it was a permanent move and all link juice is to be passed to the new page; a 302 redirect is only temporary and doesn't help your SEO.

Take a good look at your keywords.
No one says that you have to get keyword research right the first time. While you're revisiting your onsite SEO, take a look at what keywords are driving traffic to your site. Which keywords are doing a great job and which ones are under performing? Are there any new keywords that your visitors are using to find your site that you aren't actively targeting? Those keywords might reflect a change in user's search behavior and it could be worth incorporating them into your site's content and the rest of your content marketing efforts. You should also decide if there have been any changes to your industry, and subsequently new jargon, since the last time you optimized your site that mean you need to target a new set of keywords.

Looking at what keywords are driving traffic to your site is also a good way to measure the success of your SEO campaign. If you see more non-branded keywords are driving visitors (even if it's only 5 people a month), that's a sign that your SEO is working. While an uptick in branded searches means the rest of your online marketing efforts are doing their job (since people are searching for your company by name), an increase in non-branded keywords means that people who have never heard of your brand are finding your site in the search engines. These non-branded keywords are most likely variations of the keywords you are purposefully targeting on your, although every now and then a keyword out of left field can drive traffic as well.

Update content.
Has your company launched new products since the last time you did your onsite SEO? Are those new pages properly optimized with Meta descriptions, title tags, image tags, optimized content and so forth? Can you merge two thin pages of content together into one really strong page? Are you still promoting a Christmas special somewhere on your site? When you revisit your onsite SEO, one of the most important things you can do is make sure you content is in tip-top form. At the end of the day, the content on your site is what is going to convince someone to do business with your company. You want to make sure your content is written for a human reader, incorporates relevant call-to-actions, and targets both decision makers and influencers.

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Is your content designed to solve their problems? Does it show them the value of your products/services or is it just a lot of marketing mumbo-jumbo. Great content shows visitors not only what you can do for them, but how what you do is going to make their lives/business better. Make sure it's easy for someone to find the information they're looking for quickly with headings, subheadings, bullet point lists and more.

Develop a stronger internal linking structure.
You want to make it easy for someone to delve deeper and deeper into your site. Link between related pages (including blog posts!) and help keep visitors engaged for longer. You don't want to force someone to go all the way back to your homepage in order to navigate your site and an internal linking structure makes it much easier for visitors to find information. Remember, each page of your site has the potential to be a landing page for a visitor, and you don't want to lead them to a dead-end. A strong internal linking structure also helps with your SEO. Linking from one page of your site to another helps spread link juice throughout your site and helps deeper pages with less inbound links perform better in the search engines.

While you don't have to completely redo you onsite SEO every six months, but you should take a look under the hood of your site from time to time to make sure that everything is working properly and make any small adjustments as needed.

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Under-rated Web Marketing Metric - Client/Agency Communication

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:46:48 -0600

by Mike Fleming

For many businesses, a major benefit of outsourcing their web marketing strategy to a company like ours is the fact that they get the knowledge and skill of a whole Web marketing team for what most of the time amounts to the cost of one (maybe two) employees. Depending on the nature of the business, that can be hard to beat. But, along with it comes a challenge - communication. We fought with this hard for a while. We sat in meetings and brainstormed realistic ways to communicate better with clients while balancing the hours we spend doing this with formulating and implementing strategies to get results.

Proactive Communication From Agencies

Like a lot of client-agency relationships, clients pay for a certain number of hours, and we use those hours to try to maximize their results. Clients, as many of you know, don't always have a sense of how the amount of time they purchase is used because they're not tracking it. But, of course, we do because we're accountable to use that time wisely enough to ensure fair results for their investment. With this kind of pressure and time being limited, the temptation exists to spend all available time on strategy and recommendations while leaving out time to closely communicate about the relationship, condition of the client's company, insights into results, clarification on recommendations, etc.

Our experience has been that simply feeding recommendations without having discussions is sub-optimal for getting results. First, because companies don't fully understand many recommendations (which is why we're here, right?), they fail to grasp the importance of implementing them. When we email or add this to a spreadsheet - "You need to get rid of duplicate content on your site here, here and here" - they don't take the implementation quite as seriously as when you talk to them about it and stress why it should be done and the consequences of not doing it (especially if you can communicate in dollars lost). For example, we had a client roll out a brand new site and ignore all the recommendations we gave them. And they paid us for those recommendations! Needless to say, their results suffered.

Second, without regular communication, companies get distracted by lower priority items. We make critical recommendations to their search marketing strategy, and nothing happens. So, regular communication has helped us provide not only strategy, but also accountability. Our discussions allow us to regularly update them on their implementation progress. Regular communication seems to encourage action.

Communication Helps Get Results

What we've seen from this is a huge uptick in client activity for their campaigns, and results have improved. The point? With the time we have, we were worried about taking away from analysis, strategy and recommendations in favor of communicating more. But, it seems that the overall ROI has been there. Our recent experiences have communicated to me that communication is almost -if not just as - important as analyzing, formulating and implementing strategy for results.

Proactive Communication From Clients

On the flip side, if financially more advantageous to your company to outsource your Web marketing campaigns, you need to know that there's ROI for you to also be proactive in your communication. Your agency is analyzing, strategizing and making recommendations based upon what they know about your business. If they aren't on site daily, naturally their knowledge is going to be limited. While it is their job to learn about you, there are many things they just may not think of to ask. Also, what about changes in the life of your business as time rolls on? I'll give you an example.

I run PPC campaigns for a client, and I was starting a new ad test. One of the most important factors in buying this client's product is the speed at which the customer will receive the product if they order online. So, my new ad's headline said, "Product - Fast." About a week after I started the ad test, it comes to my attention through a co-worker that they were out of the product! The thing is, we initiated the conversation. If we wouldn't have, we likely would not have known about the situation. I had sent the information about the test to the client with the new headline but never heard back from them about their situation with the product. Needless to say, customers weren't exactly going to get the product fast.

So as business owners/executives, you must remember to communicate the goings-on of your business with your outside team. You're paying them. If you don't communicate, you are just wasting a portion of your own money.

Communication is an Investment

Bottom line: communication is important in ALL our relationships in life, personal and professional. The #1 cause of conflict in relationships is misunderstanding. It causes unnecessary fractures in relationships that don't need to be fractured. Don't think of communication as an inconvenience that slows things down, but rather as an investment in getting good results.

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You've Made the Majors, Now Play in It

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 10:41:40 -0600

by Todd Bailey

If you were a small startup, suddenly becoming hugely popular, would you align with a bigger brand or keep the startup momentum churning? It's somewhat akin to the decision some high school or in-college athletes face when approached by major-league teams. Do you carry on with your innocent talent or do you join the ranks of the bigger and better experienced, hoping to maintain that initial spark?

The Instagram duo played impressively, to the point the performance made Zuckerberg desire Instagram on his 'team.' Was it a good idea? Strictly thinking in monetary terms, with the deal culminating at $ 1 billion (30 percent cash, 70 in stock), it's a no-brainer question. However, there are some looming considerations.

"I hope they didn't agree to this deal because of Facebook's valuation on the secondary markets. It's still unclear whether there's a strong correlation between pricing on the secondary markets and the public market," says a former Google exec.

Facebook, expected to open its financial doors to the public next month, is estimated to value the IPO at $104 billion. The New York Times observes this number is aligned with what Facebook is trading for on the secondary market (shares are selling as high as $40).

It's understood the secondary market 'helped' Instagram execs wrap their head around the Instagram/Facebook deal. If the IPO goes as expected or better, the Instagram team could enjoy some extra benefits. If the IPO is less than grand, the proceeding sentence does an about face.

This is just another story of anxiety. There's no way to know for sure how it will all go until it all happens. What will happen with the Instagram duo? Surely, both young men could retire due to the fruits of their limited labor. Was that their original intention? Were they playing for the love of the game or for the love of the spoils of the game?

Mark Zuckerberg seems to be a player. I'm wondering when Facebook does go public, how he will act; I'm growing bored of speculation. There's no doubt a bit of 'freedom' and 'independence' is lost once a player enters bigger leagues. Zuckerberg explains the Instagram deal is more about improving the quality of Facebook than the quantity of its revenue. "We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo-sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook, and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together."

Hopefully the exchange of funds goes well for all parties involved. More so, I hope all parties involved in acquisitions and IPOs, are well compensated in intrinsic value, being satisfied with their decisions.

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How Your SEO Communication Affects a Client's Perception of Success

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:14:16 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

One of the complaints I hear most frequently from new and prospective clients is that they have no idea what their previous SEO was doing for them. As the owner of a Web marketing firm, I quickly realized that even if a client is getting results, communicating those successes to them is as important as the results themselves.

One of the great things about working in an online industry is that you don't need to exclusively have local clients. In fact, most SEO firms such as mine get contracts from all over the country and even overseas. However, because of the distance, I don't often get to meet clients in person; however, because it's good communication, I find that doing so helps a great deal.

Being distant from clients has disadvantages. Because you can't "swing by" the client's office, or easily schedule time to get together, it creates an additional burden in the communication process. We have to double our efforts to make sure efficient methods of communication are in place.

Open Up Your Communication Options

So what is the best way to communicate with distant clients? Is it by phone, email, instant messenger, Skype or social media?

I think they can all be valid forms of communication, although none is exclusively the "best" method. How you communicate can be different for each client. In fact, they can all be used, depending on a particular need at a particular time. Find out which communication methods work best for you and your clients and go with that as much as possible.

Phone: This is clearly the more traditional approach, but no less effective or important. We find that email can be cumbersome or require lots of back and forth; sometimes it just helps to pick up the phone and hammer out details. Phone calls are much more personal and can really help when handling sensitive concerns.

Skype: Skype is great, especially if you are using the video and screen-sharing options. The downside with Skype is we often have poor connectivity issues that lead to sound or video loss. To combat this, we use Skype in conjunction with a phone call so we never lose audio even if we lose video. Skype is the best way to meet with clients "face to face" without traveling. It doesn't eliminate the need to meet with clients in person, but it does provide an added personal level.

Email: There is a big push right now for companies to eliminate email for internal communications. I'm not so sure about that. Email is a great way to communicate on your time and allow someone else to respond on their time. Email is great with clients for the same reason. It allows a conversation to take place at the best time for each party involved so everyone stays as productive as possible.

Instant Messages: We don't use IM a lot for our clients but we do internally. While it can be great to make instant contact, it is also the most interruptive form of communication and can lead to reduced productivity if you get too many IMs too often. Used properly, however, it can be a great way to have a quick conversation to answer urgent questions without the delays of email.

Social Media: I would never rely on social media to communicate with clients. It's far too spotty to be an effective means of communicating anything of importance. If your clients choose to follow your Twitter, Facebook or RSS feeds, great, but I wouldn't rely on a Facebook message to communicate with a client. Social platforms are great for pushing out good information that anyone, including clients, can choose to read or ignore. Anything important needs to be handled through other methods.

Can You Over-communicate with Clients?

When working on a client account, there can be a lot of communication as recommendations, consulting info, thoughts, ideas, approvals and updates that need to be shared. Is there an appropriate level of communication you should aim for? Should you be in touch with them daily, weekly or monthly?

If there is one thing I've learned, it's that you can't over-communicate. But each client is different and the level of communication they need varies. It's important to find that place between what the client wants and what they need. Give them more than they want and never less than they need! After a few weeks or months of working together, you'll get a feel for what is appropriate for the work being done.

What works for one may be different than what works for another, but if you find the best way to communicate with each client, you're more likely to be sure they stay happy. If you have no clear ways to communicate with clients, establish internal guidelines that will provide the framework for consistent and effective communication moving forward.

Silence can magnify frustrations and inhibit results. But good communication covers over a multitude of frustrations and magnifies the positive. The time it takes to open up the lines of communication is far more valuable than the time itself, even if it is taking away from "important" work. Perception is everything and good communication improves the perception of your success.

Follow me+ at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

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Even Great Content Will Go Unnoticed

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:07:45 -0600

by Nick Stamoulis

Ask any marketing professional and they will most likely tell you that the key to online marketing success is great content. Content is what compels people on your website to buy; it's what the search engines use to properly index and rank your website, it's what helps you connect with you target audience, build your online brand presence and authority, drives your social media marketing campaign and more. In short, without great content you're pretty much dead in the water.

However, producing great content on a consistent basis is no easy task. Even if you are keeping the physical writing in-house to keep the budget under control, you have to factor in the sheer amount of man hours it takes to develop, implement and sustain a strong content marketing campaign. Plenty of site owners think content marketing is "free," but just because you don't have to pay for equipment or hardware (aside from Microsoft Office), that doesn't mean that there isn't some cost associated with content marketing. And if you have an employee investing X hours of work each week writing great content, of course you are expecting some return for their effort.

Let's say you do luck out and have a fantastic in-house writer that is a content marketing machine--churning out really good blog posts, articles, white papers, webinars and more on a regular schedule. Even if they create the most brilliant blog post ever written, it's entirely possible that you won't benefit from it. It's a hard pill to swallow, but a lesson that every marketer and site owner must learn: even great content can go unnoticed.

There are plenty of blog posts out there that tell you the secret to content marketing success is to write great content. And it's true. Great content is much more likely to get the attention of your target audience and other industry professionals. People want to share great content, so it'll get a lot of love from the social networks and other bloggers. This benefits you because your site gets a lot of quality inbound links and you build a bigger online brand presence. But there is one thing that many posts about content marketing forget to say: just because you created a great piece of content, that doesn't guarantee that people are going to care.

Think of it like this--if you are heavily invested in a content marketing campaign, it's probably safe to assume that your competition is as well. Right from the start your great content is going head to head with their great content (they know the secret too!) for readers, shares and links. If you arrived to the content game a little late, you've got quite the uphill battle ahead of you because it takes a long time to fully develop a business blog (which in my opinion is the most important component of a content marketing campaign), find your niche and voice, understand the kind of content your audience is looking for, earn readers' trust and loyalty and become a respected source of information. That kind of success doesn't happen overnight (it might take years depending on how crowded your niche is) and you'll need to be publishing great content every step of the way. That's a lot of content that is going to get overlooked/overshadowed.

It's very easy to get discouraged with your content marketing after a few months of hard work and little to show for it. Many sites abandon their blogs after a few months because other projects pop up and writing gets pushed to the back burner, they stop searching for guest blogging opportunities because they mostly hear "no" from bloggers (if they get any response at all) and the newly engaged customers aren't flooding their website like they had expected. Like anything else in life, either personal or professional, it's hard to give it your all when you feel like no one is acknowledging your work.

Creating and maintaining a strong content marketing campaign is one of the most important things a marketer or site owner can do for their online brand, but it's not an easy task. Consistently creating great content is hard enough, but learning to accept the fact that some of your great content isn't going to get you anywhere is even harder. For site owners struggling with their content marketing campaigns, my advice is to just keep plugging away at it! Online marketing is a marathon, not a sprint, and the longer you keep at it the more reward you'll get in the long run.

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Romney Social Media - An Uphill Battle for the Campaign

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:20:21 -0600

by Todd Bailey

With the inevitable GOP nod going to Mitt Romney, now that former PA Senator Rick Santorum has dropped out of the race, it is mission critical for Romney to get his Social Media act together. A conflicting, and sometimes confrontational, social voice as well as the limited social reach he currently maintains are just a few of the inadequacies the campaign needs to address.

Since Obama re-wrote the books on campaigning in 2008 with his extremely successful Social Media campaign - capturing 66% of voters 29 years of age and younger using his ability to leverage social media and organize local events, as well as volunteers, garnered unprecedented numbers of engagement and followers. Social Media has become an integral part of any candidates chances at being elected.

Goals of Social Media in Political Campaigns

Share Ideas & Messages - accomplishments and Behind the Scenes
Engage Followers - respond DIRECT to followers and ask for input or Q&As from voters
Convert followers into volunteers - Having them engage by location and spread the word

Remarketing your conversions to share/retweet the candidates message expands its social reach and is in itself a personalized endorsement

Be Careful of the Voice
The election is quite different now that it is evident that Romney will get the nod, so the Romney campaign really needs to polish up it's message and positions and begin to publish them more frequently and with clarity.

Discovering your social voice is important in gaining followers and having those followers willing to share your content messaging and overall goals. Personal attacks and siting downsides of opponents is only targeting a segment of your audience and most users are not receptive to these online mentions.

Social Media is an amplification of sound bites that can be used by an opponent, the media and the general public. As important as Romney's messaging and social voice is, equally as important (if not more important) is the voice of what other people are saying about the candidate. Currently Romney's immediate social network is 1/25^th that of President Obamas:

Facebook

Romney - 1.5 million Fans
President Obama - 25 million Fans

Twitter

Romney - 400k followers
President Obama - 13 million followers

Note: Keep in mind; in 2008 Facebook had just 100 million users compared to 800 million users in 2012

We expect Romney's social numbers to dramatically increase as we come closer to the convention and general election.

So What's New for Social Campaigning?

Ann Romney's growing Pinterest profile has become a great experiment on a new social platform at targeting the female demographic
Continued E-Mail blasts and viral videos will be apart of campaigns
QR Codes on campaign literature, signs and other political advertisements
Direct partnerships with social platforms as President Obama recently announced a Live Town Hall with Facebook and other partnerships with Twitter

Expect to see Romney shift his messaging on social platforms to solidify his voice and attract followers and fans from other GOP candidates that have dropped out. Without the important social votes Romney stands little chance of penetrating President Obama's influence in the young vote. Without a larger audience in the social arena the Romney campaign can not garner the traction required and will need to rely on his bank account for traditional media buys.

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