Search Evangelist

SEO is only part of a digital strategy

Posted on by searchology

I was recently asked by a client how to increase web sales.  This in and of itself is not a strange question for a client to ask. It is after all one of the most fundamental questions and concerns for any e-commerce business.  However, I was still shocked by the question as it was born out of a lack of understanding of digital strategy. 

When I started working with this client I was focusing primarily on SEO.  I made sure that they were submitted to the free directory services, I worked on their keywords, I had fresh and unique content created for their site, validated their code,  got their products listed on price comparison sites, posted answers to relevant forums and blogs linking back to their site.  In short I did whatever I could for free or little cost to help them with SEO.  And it worked, their traffic increased by over 100% their sales increased by 600% and things were looking pretty good for them.  So good in fact that they made the decision for me to switch my focus to other areas as they were sure that this trend would continue.   When they came to me with this plan I cautioned them that the work was not done and there was a high possibility that these trends would not continue without full time attention and an evolving digital strategy. No amount of data or anecdotal evidence would sway them, their mind was made up.  But I had said my piece and prepared them for the back slide that their sales would take.  In effect their fate was in their hands. 

Flash forward, and two months after they switched my focus they asked the question that sparked me to write this post.  Their sales had leveled off and had started taking a nose dive.  My answer to them was simple.   You have to be prepared to allocate a budget and spend money on a diversified digital strategy if you hope to increase your sales.  In short you have to spend money to make money.

Now don’t get me wrong there is an awful lot SEO can do with minimal or no monetary investment as illustrated by the dramatic upswing this client initially saw.   However, in the long run you are going to have to do things that cost money.  If you want to sell things you have to advertise what you sell.  Ask any major e-commerce player and they will tell you the same thing.  SEO alone will only take you so far.  You have to incorporate paid search advertising, display advertising, email marketing, listings on PPC price comparison sites, content network advertising, affiliate programs, and social media.   Advertising will not only help you catch buyers at the right time in the buying process it will help build brand awareness, and help increase your site popularity. These strategies will in turn help your ongoing SEO efforts.  The common factor in all these digital strategies is that they are not free to implement.  

What I see quite frequently, particularly from small businesses, is that they budget for creating a website and not much else.  They are operating on what I like to call the Field of Dreams: If you build it they will come principle.  They pay a design firm to develop an “SEO friendly” website, get some server space, and then sit back and expect orders to start rolling in.  When that doesn’t happen they take what little money they have and hire an SEO professional to do some cleanup but don’t budget much beyond the SEO professionals fees. Leaving the SEO professional to do what he/she can with little to no budget.  This can help them out a bit but it will not get them to where they want to be or assumed they would be when the decided to build a website.  The assumption was likely having a website and optimizing it for the various search engines was all they would need to do to start seeing meaningful and profitable traffic.  What they failed to account for was that their site is only a handful of pages of the billions that the search engines index and that they need other strategies to differentiate themselves from the pack and raise their level of popularity.  I think that much of this thinking has to do with the very unrealistic expectation that someone will stumble on their site and be so impressed that they will tell two friends and they’ll tell two friends and so on and so on.  Creating a snow ball effect where their traffic and popularity will increase exponentially, driving more and more sales.  This is a very risky proposition.   There are very few if any e-commerce sites that are so unique and compelling that they will essentially go viral.  And even if this does happen the site will probably be replaced in the public consciousness by the next big site and be forgotten in a matter of weeks or days.  

Regardless of the assumptions that many people make about websites and e-commerce they need to be marketed just like any other business or product.  Money will need to be spent to promote them and any budget for a website has to include marketing dollars. There needs to be a comprehensive digital strategy to maintain brand awareness, drive qualified profitable traffic and support SEO.  Take a global brand like Coke for example. They are one of the most recognizable brands in the world and unless you do not posses any of your 5 senses you are probably aware of them.  Despite this level of awareness they still spend billions of dollars a year on advertising. And they are doing it in ways that are directly comparable to digital marketing.  They use radio and TV commercials to build and maintain brand awareness much like display adverting on the web.  They advertise in magazines which were just content networks before content networks were a real thing.  They pay stores to place their products on end caps and in desirable shelf locations so that they are visible when their consumers are making a buying decision, which is nothing more than paid search.  Oh yeah and they also do web marketing.  Why do they do this if they are so recognizable and popular? They do it because they are not the only game in town and they need to separate themselves from the pack.  They also realize that they have to spend money in order to do it. 

No matter if you are an SEO professional or a business owner looking for SEO services it is important to know that SEO should always be just one piece of a much broader online marketing strategy.   Business owners should be budgeting for additional marketing efforts while SEO professionals should be prepared to explain the importance of including other marketing strategies for the broadest most cost effective reach possible. 

Brian “Bipper” Roberts Joins Searchology Blog

Posted on by searchology

It is with great pleasure Searchology 101 welcomes Brian “Bipper” Roberts as our new contributor to our blog. Bipper has several years of search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, social media, and data analysis experience. In addition, his insight, commentary, and thought provoking ideas will help change your way of thinking about the Internet and marketing strategies.

Bipper brings more than commentary and mad Internet marketing skills; he is an experienced singe, mathematician [discrete math is his muse], and a trusted Searchology TM partner.  Bipper has already added valuable content, The Danger of Aggregate Data . Welcome Bip and we look forward to your participation!

Blocked From Facebook – Not So Social

Posted on by searchology

Very recently I was blocked from sending messages on Facebook. I am an active participant in the social media craze and it has been a real treat catching up with long lost friends. After all, the purpose of social media and Facebook is to be SOCIAL. You can imagine my surprise when I was suddenly blocked from sending messages on this social media outlet.

As it turns out, I am not the only one who has been banned. For starters, I’m not sure why I was banned and it flies in the face of being social online. One would assume that reaching out to friends, family, and sending several messages in a day or within a 24 hour period would be the norm. Facebook does not see it that way. Apparently, if you send out too many messages in a short period of time the Facebook powers will block your ability to send out messages.

For a split second I felt pretty terrible, as if I was some type of SPAMMING monster hiding under the bridge waiting for the opportunity to hit all my friends with the latest AMWAY product. Better yet, sending out the newest multi-level marketing ploy which only the tops in the program make money and all others pay for conventions and books created by compete idiots.

After running a few searches for “banned from Facebook” and “blocked from Facebook” I found hundreds of threads and posts about the subject. As you may imagine, the vast majority of responders regarded the situation as downright mean, unwarranted, and counter productive. If you can’t be social and are limited to HOW SOCIAL YOU CAN be….what is the point?

I certainly understand the need to protect others from SPAM, stalkers, unwanted-long-lost-connections, and repetitive messages. I also understand that there may be only so many messages Facebook can send through their servers. However, the rules are very unclear as to how many messages and message types any person can send out. These are the possible reasons for becoming banned on Facebook, but I would submit another, yet more dubious reason: Facebook may be in the process of testing the waters for some type of social media model which you will have to pay for via subscription.

According to the Facebook Blog, they have 100 million users and growing. This could be a huge cash cow. How many users would drop out if they came out with a subscription based social media service? Is this not the very nexus of a oxymoron?  Be social, but not too social. Be found but don’t reply too much or too often. Put your social life up for the world but be sure to reign it in. I wonder if Facebook punishes business or fan pages for posting messages…I think not.

Based on all of the posts I have read, I may be banned for 24 hours and on some type of watch list thereafter. Social media was created for individuals to be social and if you can’t be social in a legitimate way via online interaction, why be social online at all? It was not my intention to go on a rant, but share the experience on the Searchology blog as a message to all you social media users out there; if you are too social on the biggest social media network, Facebook, they’ve got your number.

The Danger of Aggregate Data

Posted on by searchology

The question I hear most often from clients and employers is “What does this data mean?” This is most frequently asked in reference to Google analytics aggregate data.  The short answer to this is aggregate data does not mean all that much.  Aggregate data summarizes or combines other data for analytical and research purposes.  It is the analytical equivalent of cliffs notes.   Data is very powerful and can help make informed decisions about content, direction, conversion and a host of other topics.  But looked at improperly it is as accurate as if you wrote down answers on scraps of paper and randomly pulled them out of a hat.  

The data you collect tells the story of your site.  The problem is that for the most part the aggregate data only tells part of the story.  Take for example the information you can see in the Google Analytics Dashboard.  When you first log into Google Analytics you see a snapshot of your site: Total visitors, unique visitors, traffic sources, etc…  This information is a good place to start but basing decisions solely off of this view will do you a disservice.  

Say for example you go to your dashboard and see that your bounce rate is 70%.  This means that 70% of all visitors came to your site saw the home page and left immediately, deciding that your site was not even worth a second click.  You would naturally assume based on this aggregate data that there was something horribly wrong with your landing page.  You decide to spend money on a costly redesign to make your home page more inviting.   After investing thousands of dollars you re-launch your landing page and sit back confident that you will now see a dramatic decrease in you bounce rate and consequently a just as dramatic an increase in conversions.  But nothing changes so you conclude that you must not have gotten the design right. Still believing that your high bounce rate is a function of the landing page design you decide that you will rotate a few different designs and see which one works best and has the lowest bounce rate and highest conversion rate.   This time you see a positive change but it is not statistically relevant.  You are at a loss, you were sure that one of these designs would surely make the impact you were looking for but all you got for your trouble is a bunch of invoices from a designer. 

Now let’s take the same situation and instead of looking at the aggregate data we segment that data.  You find that you have 3 top traffic sources: a mystery referral URL, organic search, and paid search.  The mystery URL is sending a bulk of your traffic.  You have noticed this URL before and though you were unfamiliar with it you figured any traffic is good traffic and you are happy to have it.  You start to get curious about this traffic and you drill down to the bounce rates for your top sources.   You see that organic search has a bounce rate below 40% and so does paid search but the mystery referral URL has a bounce rate close to 90%.  Not only does it have a high bounce rate the average time on site is less than 20 seconds.  What in the world is going on? How can this be?  WTF? Are all questions that you should immediately ask yourself if you see this situation. Digging deeper you find that this mystery URL is associated with a pyramid scheme paying people to surf to several web sites a day. This is all unqualified garbage traffic and all it is doing is skewing your aggregate data.  Since you took the time to segment you data you see that, while you have some more work to do driving good targeted traffic to your site the good traffic you are seeing is sticking around and checking out what you have to offer.  Your time will be best spent cleaning up your analytics as best you can and getting the story straight before you spend money or resources on redesigns or other costly fixes for problems that may not exist.

Presidential Internet “Kill Switch”

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The Huffington Post recently reported that Joe Lieberman is sending in a bill to the Senate to allow the President of the U.S. the ability to shut down portions of the Internet when needed. What would the President need to shut any part of the Internet down for? I could understand the need to kill the Internet for something like cyber crimes or CIA cyber infiltration but nothing else. Lieberman may have offered this up for consideration because of a major leak from Wikileaks (the U.S. is currently seeking the founder of Wikileaks for unknown reasons).  No matter the reason, this would be unacceptable for our Internet liberties, freedom of information, and our collective right to seek truths wherever they may be.

Currently we all enjoy the Internet on a regular basis, I for one am online up to 16 hours a day. I could not imagine attempting to log on and see the following notice:

Your Internet is shut down. You will not see Google ads today. You will not see your emails or pay your bills. You will not be able to waste any time at work. In fact, due to the manual shut down, don’t bother going into the office today, Don’t bother contacting your service provide because your U.S. Government is now in control. 

The Internet “Kill Switch”

Posted on by searchology

According to the Huffington Post, there is another proposal proposed by Joseph Lieberman to which would allow the President of the United States to shut down or take control over portions of the Internet. Not only is this news, but if it passes, it would potentially change how we gather information and what we can access via the Internet forever. What reasons would the U.S. government have  for shutting down the Internet? The short list; cyber terrorism, protect government agencies, secure government files from groups like Wikileaks , after that…it gets very fuzzy on why a Internet Kill Switch would be needed.

In fact, I imagine that if government agencies are protecting their data, records, top secret files, and have the best professionals in the industry, there is no need at all for a kill switch of any type for the Internet. How does shutting down the Internet protect “the people”? Shutting off access and the Internet does nothing for anyone at anytime. If your computer is protected properly, you and your data should be just fine. If not, get better counter-hackers to combat the hackers or build better firewalls.

The power of the Internet is; the freedom to publish content and read content freely without restraint or censorship. Knowledge is power. The ability to locate documents, new languages, concepts, formulas, and information is empowering. If is one of the purest forms of freedom we have ever experienced. If the freedom to access the Internet becomes restricted consider, the restrictions and “Kill Switch” the Chinese or North Koreans have.

Don’t get me wrong…I don’t think a Kill Switch would ever pass. Nor do I think our government would revert back to hunting communists. Then again, Germany and the world was doing just fine prior to Hitler. The Internet may end up being the most important discovery in human history. To give anyone man, person, woman, or government body the ability to kill it for any reason is the very first step in controlling and regulation for other, more personal liberties.

Keeping the Internet accessible for all is critical for commerce, communication, liberty, and in some cases life itself. So, ponder the possibility of turning on your computer one day to find FaceBook has been shut down, or you simply can’t log in and all you see is this:

Due to U.S. Government Policy Bill number 666-4579 Article – A The United States Government has shut down the Internet because we can’t protect our own computers from the boogieman. Please try in a few weeks or so [when after long delays in bureaucratic B.S.] we will have the Internet turned back on. We do not apologize for this inconvenience.

BP Oil spill and the Search Results – Good PR or good for nothing?

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Try a few searches on Google for “bp oil spill” or even better…try “oil spill response” and you will find some very interesting results. The first of which is British Petroleum buying keywords to “manipulate the search results” as Kieth Olbermann pointed out this evening on MSNBC.  ABC may have broken the new first with their take on BP Buys Search Engine Phrases. This would be a good first step in online reputation management and may backfire as the disaster is certainly going to cost BP, America, The Gulf Coast, and our planet more than just a few pennies per click.

While on the surface of things, it may seem like a great way to start changing hearts and minds of America it will not. And it is way to little way to late. The current situation in the BP has created could have been avoided in the first place. While I don’t care to go into all of the details of who, how, and why [as I am not an expert in this area]; the BP oil spill should serve as a major warning to those companies who are facing a nasty online reputation management situation.

If you care about your brand and company…act accordingly in the first place. None of us as individuals or companies have the ability or service level to execute and deliver without a flaw. This should be expected as nothing goes without a bump or hiccup. The point is; once you have soiled your reputation, the damage done may be more than you could have imagined. No matter how much money you spend on Google Ad Words or Yahoo! Search Marketing or search engine optimization or FaceBook…it simply will be too late for any type of damage control.

What makes matters worse for BP is the “oil spill response” number one result. It is Oilspillresponse.com. It is a collaborate effort from major oil companies extolling their collective ability to respond to oil spills. Obviously this is complete and utter B.S. I’ve yet to hear any other oil company coming to the aid of America or British Petroleum. BP and other companies can drill in deep waters very well…but they cannot fix a catastrophe if there is one. In fact, oil response technology has not change very much in the past 30 years. Drill baby drill indeed.

BP stock is down, they may face criminal charges, potential costs of $4,500 per barrel spilled, and have caused the worst environmental disaster ever. Now don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of companies who take ownership of their brands, products, and services. However, BP has proven it only takes on mistake with one client can cause the biggest reputation management problem without a solution.

Let them spend millions on keywords and SEO experts. No matter what they do, BP will be permanently destroyed because of gross negligence and praying to the dollar almighty. The time has returned for being 100% responsible for what you do, say, and produce. It is not okay too ask too much and return too little. It is not okay to act first and ask questions later. It is not okay to risk things that are not yours to risk. It is not okay to jeopardize ANYTHING with out real deep risk assessment. It is not okay to walk away without taking responsibility and fixing what has been broken. Time to pay the piper and time for 100% accountability.

At one time Enron was one of the biggest accounting firms in the world. No they are not and their CEO is in jail along with a few Enron executives. If you think BP is too big to fail…you are wrong. If you think your online reputation can survive any storm…you are wrong. In the end, nothing will save BP and nothing will bring back our coast lines. Buy baby buy…but it won’t help you now.

The big take away here is this; things happen, life happens, mistakes happen. Consumers and customers can forgive…and forget. But some mistakes are simply too much, too big, and too costly. My grandfather always said, “Plan your work and work your plan.” I suggest doing likewise. One thing is for certain…BP was totally unprepared for something like this. Welcome to day 49 of the BP oil spill disaster.

 

There Is No Guarantee in SEO

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I’ve been asked many times over, “Do you offer a guarantee for your SEO services?” The answer is no. I never have and I never will. My automatic response is my lack of ability to control the Google algorithms. Trying to reign in or directly control Google’s magnum opus is like trying to rebuild the pyramids of Egypt in my back yard. It just isn’t going to happen. All a professional SEO consultant or SEO firm can do is provide the best practices and do their best to deliver good content, links, and articles, etc.

In a recent post, SEO Guarantees Should Not Exist , by Nick Stamoulis backs me up on this issue. Not only with his own take on the SEO guarantee but with a post directly from the Google Webmaster Blog. I refer you to a Q&A session in which the following was asked [as linked in Nick’s post];

Question: Should I believe SEO agencies that promise to make my site rank
first in Google in a few months and with a precise number of links?

Google’s Answer: No
one can make that promise; therefore the short answer is no, you should
not…

Now it should be officially settled. No one can guarantee top ranking for any keyword for any website. Google maintains about 70% of the overall search volume in the U.S. and everyone wants to be on top. This is totally understandable. However, not everyone can be on top. Keep this in mind; the number one goal of SEO is to increase your website performance for your visitors. In doing so, you should increase your website ranking for keywords. Your quality of content should be your number one goal and your site will be rewarded for it. Why? Google says so in the Webmaster Guidelines….”Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines.”

Did Social Media Just Get Mean Or More Honest?

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This morning in the Chicago Red Eye, I read a very brief segment about Unvarnished, the new social website which allows users to rate their coworkers, bosses, business partners, and more. Certainly this raises a lot of questions about what is going to happen with social media. What if you have a coworker who constantly shows up drunk? What if your boss monitors a site like this? Could your reviews of your peers act as the new Big Brother? What will be the impact on your future career?

Those of us that are in ‘the know’ or have figured out that your privacy is no longer really yours…know that what you put online can come back to haunt you. Last night on Fox News Chicago, they ran a spot about a young teenage girl who was coaxed by her then boyfriend to create a video starring her in flagrante delicto. The resulting video was sent around the world and is illegal to own and publish in most countries because it is child pornography. The problem is this video has traveled the world and the poor child’s life is in tatters because of the viral nature of the Internet [of which is, in part, propelled by social media].

Consider this your fair warning. Post [online] only what you would share with your future boss or grandmother. All else is fair game and will be used against you in the public court of opinion. I guarantee you, for those who choose to ignore the power of billions online…you will surly parish from the masses willing to hunt down the scandals and trash we post about ourselves.  

Tear down your beer photos and college pics…and any comment [left, right, or middle] which may offend the your neighbor. Rest assured our future online holds more transparency than we really want to share. It is the nature of social media to share, rate, discuss, and socialize. Think back to your high school days or college days which for many of us was prior to the social media explosion.

Some rumors and unscrupulous events could be hidden or waved away. Now, once it’s online it may take the end of humanity before it comes off billions of prying eyes. The good news, and there is good news, some of us really don’t care about our privacy and what we post online. If you don’t mind airing your dirty laundry, emotions, drunk photos, and still believe in freedom of expression…I say let it rip and roll.

 

Freedom Of Information & The Internet …Not In Texas

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I have a lot of opinions about the Internet, online advertising, politics, etc. I usually don’t discuss or write about the intersection of Internet and politics. It is a little off topic for me to discuss politics and the Internet. It seems as if Barack Obama solidified how important the Internet can be when it comes to politics and, more importantly the real influence it can wield. Most of my material should stay in the realm of searchology. However,  this was a little to big of a story for me to pass up.

There is no doubt, the Internet is a powerful tool and may become even more powerful than books. You remember books right? Kind of like vinyl, old school and out of style but still cool. I’m sure your asking yourself, how this could be so? The Internet becoming more important than books. The answer is one word. TEXAS. Well really it’s the Texas State Board of Education.

You see, the Texas Sate Board of Education, or as I like to call it Texas State Board of Stupification, is in the process of redefining textbooks which will be widely distributed and read in a classroom near you very soon. Because Texas contains around 7% of the American population and one of the biggest text book buyers. Because of the Texan buying power and the amount of books that will be printed, it is certain that more books will be printed for more than just Texans.

While I would normally say, bulk book buying is a good idea…it’s not. It’s not a good idea when books (purchased and circulated in bulk) are used to teach history, to our future leaders, side on the conserviative left, don’t seperate church and state, and push Christian values. Hey, I’m all about Christian values, and Muslim values, and Hindu values…you get the point. All are create equal.

Future generations of young Texans and school children around the U.S. will need to use the Internet to get the truth about history. Real history, not contrived, and biased history. Sure, history is biased as it is written by the winners. It did seem for a while we were getting closer to a more universal truth including OUR HISTORY as opposed to the winners history.

As long as we can keep the information we find on the Internet free…that should provided the opportunity for young Texas children and kids of the New Texas History of The U.S. 1st Edition, a way to find some truth. Simply put, no one body should be in charge of our text books. It should be a panel or a collective of several cultures, perspectives, and historical facts…not A PANEL FROM TEXAS!

The Internet may provide the type of freedom needed to break free from dis-information, lies, major conservatisim, radical right nut jobs, So, let’s all hope the grand ole’ party dosen’t get a hold of our free-information-internet-freedom…or we may all be in really big trouble.