When I joined, Lisa announced that new SEO chick Judith Lewis was joining and yadda yadda yadda but I started out talking all business and not much fun SEO - and here I go again! One of the areas I often write about is the connection between paid and natural search and how both are an important part of your online strategy. This importance stems not only from the point of view of controlling real estate on the page, but the reinforcement within the searchers mind of your brand.
Organic search results and paid search results are mixed in on the search results page (commonly referred to as the SERP) to varying degrees depending on the engine. The human brain will register unconsciously more information than the conscious mind can grasp. On a SERP, this means the more mentions your site/brand has, the more likely this will register in the searchers mind and sway their decision making process.
Natural and paid search can work in harmony to increase brand/site awareness especially if your organic rankings are not in the top five. While a smaller proportion of searchers will click on a paid search result, it is still important to have a presence there. Since you do not pay for exposure, just clicks, maintaining a presence in the SERP is essential.
For some searchers, this paid result represents an investment in that search term and therefore increased relevance. For other searchers the ad may have a more compelling call to action. To those searchers who choose organic results, your paid ad may become more relevant if what they require is not listed naturally. A paid search ad can also offer a different call to action than your organic listing.
Organic listings, attracting around 80% of searchers clicks, are the main focus for any site. With each page able to rank for a query it is authoritative for, getting organic optimization right is essential. Temporal, semantic and popularity elements of the search algorithm are difficult to fool and as such, sometimes paid search gets you where natural/organic has not yet placed you.
Paid and natural search both have a role to play in attracting searchers. Each provides opportunities to target searchers through exposure and availability of listing. The importance of display cannot be discounted though as Seth Godin illustrates here
I read an interesting article the other day which discussed the importance of targeting and bounce rates and it got me to thinking about the clients that I have had, past and present and the buckets of money I have seen thrown away. So, I decided to put a list together of 10 ways you or your client may be wasting money they could be paying you:
- Stop sending paid traffic to your home!
- Your homepage is rarely the page your potential customers are looking for. If I am searching for “buy sony flatscreen 1080p” PLEASE send me to a page with sony flat screen tv’s on it!
- Check your homepage’s bounce rate. It is 60% than you should only be sending people searching for “sitename.com” to that page otherwise, you are throwing at least 60% of your money away. Why do I say at least? Because if you are sending all your paid traffic to your homepage than you probably haven’t optimized your paid search ads and are just looking for a high click through rate.
- Stop duplicating terms in your paid search accounts
- It never ceases to amaze me when clients are using the same keyword in multiple ad groups with the same geo-targeting and timing. Don’t do this
- Have goals for your website
- Set goals for your website. “I want to make money.” Isn’t a sufficient goal. Come up with trackable metrics to get you there so you can optimize your website to eventually make you some more money.
- Publishing sites - # of page views, repeat visitors, high CPM.
- Ecommerce – lifetime value
- Lead-gen sites are a monster in and of themselves. If you generate leads so that they become sales then focusing on the lead only is going to inhibit you from making money. Remember, unless you are selling leads, they don’ t make you any money until they become a sale.
- Don’t cut the long-tail
- If you aren’t tracking performance over-time, you are probably missing all of your long-tail terms. Don’t cut terms that are attracting people in the educational phase of the sales-cycle. If you market to them differently you can increase your conversion rate over time. Don’t cut them just because these phrases take a little longer to convert - MARKET TO THEM DIFFERENTLY. These are long sales cycle leads
- Use negative keywords in your paid search campaigns
- This may sound basic, but if you aren’t using negative keywords than you are paying for traffic that will NEVER make you a dollar, pound or euro. If you have paid-search clients or use paid search and using mostly broad match than you really need to spend some time investigating exactly what terms are being clicked on.
- Learn what terms lead to conversion and optimize your site accordingly
- Welcome to the beauty of the internet and web analytics. You can actually tell how people get to your site, what they do there and if they are making you money. It’s brilliant. So why are you optimizing your site based on what you think will work well?
- Stop making creative decisions based on what your boss thinks is a good idea.
- See point 6. We have the ability to test and optimize, which means we can run multiple ad creatives (banner and search) and see what drives the greatest revenue rather than based on the CxO’s affinity to the color blue. Back your decisions with data
- Test, test, test and SPLIT TEST!
- See point 7. Products like Google website optimizer and Omniture’s Test and Target (formerly Offermatica) can optimize your landing pages based on conversions. There is no excuse for not testing your landing pages and assuming that your designers first try is always correct. In all likelihood it is not optimal and assuming it is will make an ass out you but not me because I’m split testing
- Track how changes to your website affect your bottom line
- If designers, programmers, your kids or whomever are making website changes that affect your business– especially your homepage – you should be recording that this is being done and how this is affecting organic placement and conversions. If there is no tracking there is no accountability.
- Know what your users are clicking on
- Heatmaps and click analysis tools, like Crazy Egg are great at letting you know what your users are clicking on and responding to. Using this information to optimize page layout should help you to make the most of the traffic that you have.
In the recesses of my dark grey past, I did engage in some shady techniques that would have gotten me arrested had this new law existed back then. In my defence it wouldn’t have been just me that would have been sent to the dock - Sony, Wal-Mart, McDonalds and others would have been criminals had new legislation been in force back then.
What new law would have made me a criminal had I not seen the light and become a white hat (honest! pure as driven snow)? “Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008” This interesting law comes in to force on May 28th 2008 and within the UK stands to criminalise some regrettably common practices.
Yes, I have pretended to be a customer in my shady past and recruited others to help in my nefarious schemes. I have posted reviews having never visited the establishments as part of a commission. I have used friends to help do the same from various IPs over a period of time. I have been a very naughty girl but I’m better now thank goodness.
So, what’s up? Well, it all comes back to certain fakes out there and the need to guard against them. A ‘flog’ is a fake blog usually created by a PR or online marketing firm for the purpose of falsely representing themselves as a consumer, usually for the purposes of creating a buzz around a specific product or brand. Sometimes this is done as a brand or online reputation management activity.
Wal-Mart had one of the more famous flogs about a couple in an RV parking at various Wal-Mart stores across America and praising staff, service and selection. Sony hit the headlines through their “All I Want for Christmas” flog which claimed to be by a boy who wanted a PS3 for Christmas. McDonalds hit some headlines with the 4Railways flog about someone obsessed with getting all four railway cards in McDonalds monopoly game. There are tons more, sometimes created by our colleagues in this industry we all love.
So, what does it all really say? The section in question states that commercial practices which are unfair include “Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer.” Whoops… bad Judith… no chocolate for you! Thankfully when I did it, I was way less transparent than one I saw recently. *rolls eyes* Amateurs!
Whether it is “Joan08” pretending to be a patron at a restaurant or “Jim and Laura” pretending to be Wal-Mart customers, deliberately misleading consumers is going to be punishable under law. Be aware black hats in the UK – if you get caught the stakes just got criminally high.
No - this isn’t such a weird question, and NO I didn’t allude to anyone’s bowel movements either…
I did however, say NUMBER 1!
If you still have to wonder “But what does she mean?“, then you’ve just answered my question silently.
The truth is that most people in business - their own or someone else’s - hardly ever take time for themselves, or time off. As women in business, we are jointly even more guilty of forgetting the ‘Golden Rule’.
The result? An ever more stressed out society and and a depleted spirit.
The statistics about the damage stress can do are many and all-encompassing, so I won’t launch into that part of the topic. But what I ask of you is to sit and think just for a sec…
When was the last time you truly took a break?
I’ve touched on this topic before, so here I will take an unexpected turn! And ask you - when was the last time you truly knew who and what you want out of life?
Consider this;
The most important lesson you learn in business, or a project for that matter, is that you have to have a clear and specific goal - a measurable milestone/benchmark, etc. Fail to set that and you will almost certainly fail the task…
So how come so many of us, apply this to our business, and not our personal lives?
How come, most people take 40 to 50 years of their life (and some take a lifetime) to come to the conclusion that they are THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THEIR OWN LIVES? And then to set clear goals of what they want out of them? And then set about to achieve it as if someone was going to hold them accountable?
Why do so many people still put “what people think” of them before what they, themselves feel and would like to do?
How come, so many people take charge in their business tasks, and yet fail to stand up for their personal lives?
So what’s the point of this post?
Well, I want to give you a “wake up call”, a kick in the privates if you want - your private thoughts that is…
Start being selfish! There’s nothing wrong with that if done in the right way.
Try this on for an experiment, and you WILL see the freedom it will give you.
Sit down and think of one are of your life that you would like to get a resolve. Then put time aside and tackle this as if it was a business task/project that your boss gave you - or if you’re self employed - that you need to complete so your business can survive.
See the quality of results you get…
Have fun :o)
Hey there. I’m not sure if you know who I am, but my name is Rebecca Kelley, and I was an SEO Chick (here’s where you all drone back, “Hi, Rebecca,” as if I’m in rehab). When Lisa asked me if I wanted to become one way back in June of last year, and I thought, “Yeah, that’d be cool. Girl power, and all that good stuff!” I promised to fulfill my SEO Chick duties to the best of my abilities. Those duties pretty much only consisted of blogging, but hey, I can do that, right? No problem.
I wrote a post, and time passed. And passed. And passed. Lisa would casually email me every so often and politely ask if I was going to post again soon. “Sure!” I said, “No problem!” Eventually, I wrote another post, a whopping two contributions in the past several months. Needless to say, I sucked. I was not worthy of my SEO Chicks crown, and so I stepped down as “official SEO Chick” to that of a guest blogger. Aw.
The point is that, basically, I overpromised and underdelivered. I told Lisa that sure, I’d guest blog until the cows came home. I’d be on that blog morning, noon, and night, and I’d contribute the awesomest posts known to man. Well, I didn’t. I sucked it up and disappointed my fellow chicks as a result.
This translates across multiple mediums. It’s tempting to promise your client everything under the sun in order to impress him or her, but you have to be reasonable, too. There are only so many hours in a day and you have X other tasks to do, not to mention a social life. If you overpromise to your client and underdeliver, well, you’re not going to have a happy client. Maybe your contact won’t provide you with a testimonial, or maybe he’ll withhold payment, or maybe you’ll just have that feeling in your gut knowing that you disappointed someone. It’s not a nice feeling.
Conversely, if you set up conservative, reasonable deliverables and deliver on time, or, better yet, deliver the task and then some, your client will think you’re the best thing since sliced bread. Underpromising (or maybe simply “promising”) and overdelivering will delight your client to no end. And it makes sense, right? Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
Well, here’s my attempt to promise and deliver. I promise to keep guest blogging for SEO Chicks on a regular basis—maybe not every week, but at least once or twice a month. The site has accumulated a score of talented writers, so I can patiently wait my turn until it’s time for me to take a crack at the blog. That’s a promise I expect to keep, and hopefully Lisa won’t break my legs. 
Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Drink For Charity:
1. Drinking is fun, and since it is for charity, it is more than a networking opportunity, it is a write-off.
2.Chance to see your favorite male SEO’s wear women’s clothing
 
3. You actually get to help choose what charity gets the money – SO VOTE NOW AND VOTE OFTEN
4. This event is OPEN TO ANYONE! You don’t need to be a rockstar or spend $1M with Google to get an invite.
5. Where else are you going to drink as much as you can for only $40 in NYC?
6. You get to hang out with me ( Okay so I can’t count)
Actual Details
IM-NY is holding its semi-annual Charity Event, and thanks to some of the coolest guys I know, all proceeds go to charity. Which charity you ask? Well that is up to you, so get your vote on http://botw.org/helpcenter/sesny08_charity.aspx and decide who gets the cash.
This event is open to ANYONE! $40 gets you open bar and snacks from 8pm-midnight at the Black Finn NY. This will likely sell out, so if you are interested in coming, shoot me an e-mail (Lauren [at] lvlogic [dot] com) and I’ll put you on the guest list – just remember to bring your money. There will also be a raffle with some great prizes that I’ll tell you about before the event gets closer.
Firstly, let me say, I’m excited to be here with a group of such talented women. Secondly, the the two sentence intro on me is that I’ve been doing SEO, ppc and analytics in the forex industry and for myself at lvlogic for a little over 3 years. I can often be found hanging out at the bar with several of the guys from IM-NY talking shop over a ketel one on the rocks or a nice glass of wine. The bar is also where I met Lisa (running theme possibly) and after several drinks, a few games of craps and some tequila and eggs, she asked me to be a chicklet. So, here is everything you ever wanted to know about how to build a brand in 5 easy steps (more or less).
As a new business starting out, getting market share can be an overwhelming task. You need more than just an out of the box website and big dreams. You need a game plan.
How to make one is what we are going to discuss through research and development of a story that sells, how to rank for your brand name and what to do next.
Remember, you may not be Coca-Cola, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about branding your product from the start.
1. Competitive Research
I know what you are thinking – why am I doing competitive research? I am branding my product not trying to get links. Competitive research is one of the most, if not ‘the’ most important (and often overlooked) steps when you start any online project.
Figure out who the competition is and what they are doing. Learn the key terms for your niche and make a list of who is ranking for them. Once you discover who your key competitors are, figure out what terms they are ranking for (I recommend using www.compete.com) and what you can do better.
The keywords give you direction and online are an important ingredient in branding. Knowing where your competitors are getting their traffic shows you what is in the mind of potential visitors. Gear your site to these queries and you position yourself, over time, in the minds of your potential customers. If they always see you everytime they search for what you offer you become associated with the terms and all they suggest to the searchers.
2. What is your story?
Now that you have completed Step 1 and found out who your competition is and what your future clients think about when looking for your niche, you should have an idea of what stories the competition is telling and to a degree what your clients are looking for. Remember consumers buy the stories behind the product, not the product itself. You as a new brand are at a clear advantage here. You have a bird’s eye view of your competition and where they are succeeding and where they are faltering. Now figure out what your story is and how to sell it better than anyone else.
3. Create your content
As we all know, in the online world content is king (and Google is the emperor, but that’s another article). Build content based around the key terms in your niche and become an authority. This will take time, work and resources, but it will pay off. Do not try and make one page that adddresses all the keywords. Make individual pages for each keyword (or at most three keywords a page). This gives you more pages - which adds to the size of the site and the impact it will have in Google, as well as possibly pushing you up in search results for many keywords - thus grabbing clients who are looking for your products through different perspectives.
It is good to remember that people rarely share how they get information, but they do share the information.
4. Rank for your brand name
Make sure you rank highly for your brand name. If your name is something generic that will be near impossible to rank for, change it. No, seriously, change your company’s name now. It will be cheaper to re-file some paperwork than it will be to lose out on all those sales because no one can find your site.
Whether you are a small company (and even if you are a large company) you should also be taking advantage of social media and using it to help dominate the SERPs for your brand name and brand specific products. Create and interlink various social media profiles like linkedin, naymz, squidoo, and myspace.
When choosing a name remember to consider something easy to remember and that Google likes domain names that are a reflection of the search term. In other words, you can rank well with a domain that is the same as a search term (try doing searches and see the domain name there should be a listing that matches keyword and domain).
5. Promote brand loyalists
Create frequent visitor/buyer discounts and rewards programs. This is where the cell phone companies have it backwards. They offer all kinds of promotions to new customers to try to entice them to make the switch over rather than creating customer loyalty programs to keep clients. This is why most people have no brand loyalty when it comes to cell phones and they often leave when their contract is up because another brand is offering them the best new phones free if the jump ship. Don’t let this happen to your brand. Keep customers happy.
This all seems fairly straight forward and it is. It just takes time and commitment, which if you have, it will pay off.
Yep, just because I’m feeling a bit controversial today (yes that IS one hormonal privilege extended almost exclusively to us - the fairer sex), I’ve decided to pose a discussion question.
Actually, my other reason is because the initial answer to the question is by none other than Mr Godin… so you see I just couldn’t resist.
The Question:
“Social Networking sites are incredibly popular - what are the benefits of this new medium, and is it set to continue to rise in popularity?”
The Answer:
“Social Networks - if you try to glue a brand on top of a social network, you get a meatball sundae. Once again, the networks make it easiest for those who actually have something to say.”
My View:
I’ve come around to respect social networking sites as a good marketing tool - although not very targeted. Steph has had a lot to do with that - thank you :o) I can totally see it as a tool in my marketing toolbox. But I, as I think most of you, believe that it can’t work in isolation - hence Seth’s response. I also don’t believe that any single technique in marketing should exist in isolation.
Your View:
Well, this is the bit where I’d like to hear your views on the question above - just a little bit of healthy discussion…
The response and question are taken from an interesting interview with Seth Godin that I got from Wordracker’s site. The interview precedes a very exciting moment in my life… ok, I’m not THAT sad… but I’m excited… The release of Seth’s new book “Meatball Sundae“. Will get me it ASAP.
Anyway, here’s the article, and please let me know what your thoughts are.
Figuring Out The Words - The Seth Godin Interview >>
P.S. Not sure about Seth in a chef’s hat…?
P.P.S. A good quote that’ll get some heads nodding:
“SEO is not a black art. It’s often clients who want shortcuts rather than hard work that are the problem. The best SEO is great content and if you don’t create that you won’t get search engine traffic.”
I am a dedicated online marketer, but I am originally from a traditional - offline marketing background. I suspect there are a lot of other people like me that have fallen head-over-heels in love with the flexibility and instant gratification ‘online’ provides…
That said - I will never stop giving credit to offline marketing techniques and the wisdom traditional marketing has to offer. Frankly - if you want to be anything in marketing - the building blocks are what you should focus on before you choose your ‘forte’.
So, it will come as no surprise when I draw yet another online to offline correlation with this post :o)
There is a very effective and not so well known technique in marketing - where you would make up your typical target audience members - Eben Pagan calls it Avatar building - yes just like in games…
I have to admit I only heard about this technique about a year ago (blush), but have not stopped using it since and it is one of the BEST tools in my marketing toolkit (yes I do like a little bit of DIY).
I will describe how it works in a very short few words, and then I’d like you to go and listen to an excellent 22 min video of Rand Fishkin and Ian Lurie that describes exactly how to go on about creating those.
Basically, if you are running a marketing campaign of any kind, you need to be very clear about who you’re marketing to. Gone are the days when you could just ‘patch-up’ a sales letter and make money without having a real clue about your target audience.
By actually taking the time to build a profile of the one to three audience types that would be your potential customers, you are forcing yourself to take them seriously and to understand their motivations and their circumstances.
Having built a virtual character, you can now tailor your campaign or campaigns to specifically appeal to your customer… And yes - you guessed right - all that so that your conversion rates improve.
The special twist in the tail for us - internet marketers - is that you can test and tweak your virtual avatars to perfection - pushing your campaigns to conversion rates you’ve never known before.
Well, I can go on forever about this as I am a great fan. All I can say is that it might seem time-consuming. You might think it’s not THAT important and it’s a bit fluffy around the edges… But you should try it at least once! You’ll never start your campaigns otherwise.
I realise this post ain’t so much of an original content, but the video is soo good - I don’t see the need for me to try and say it better. I’m just the messenger… For those of you who have already seen this (post is a few days old ;o) - why didn’t you share?
Here’s the link again: Creating Personas 101, with Rand and Ian Lurie
Oh, you may want to take notes… Enjoy!
… uhmm I mean mind?
No, I haven’t hit my head on a sharp object and lost all speaking sense - on the contrary - I feel I have discovered something, so I thought I’d share :o)
I am a chronic thinker by nature. I think while cooking (stop sniggering-I DO cook). I think while browsing the net. I think while in the shower, bath tub, while exercising, working…..aaaaggghhh! I even think while I’m thinking.
I know I’m not alone in this - most people do it. And what’s worse, most people don’t realise that they do! All the time. Some think this is the way it’s supposed to be, and if your mind is not busy conceptualising some new idea, or business model, you’ve become complacent.
Most of us, when we are lucky enough to experience a ‘blank’ moment, we panic. Poop! I must have gone stupid - I have no thoughts!!
But it is a well known fact that a cluttered or tired mind produces rotten fruit. OK, enough of the analogies - but in today’s over worked, fast-paced business environment its easy to become too thoughtful.
OK, I realise most of you have never thought of this, and I am using really big words all at once, but take a second and think about what I just said…
DO YOU EVER ‘SWITCH OFF’?
Is your mind in charge of you, or are in charge of your mind?
The other day I finished another book - the main concept of it is to practice mind control and to learn to have a few ‘mind-free’ moments a few times a day. Just like house keeping.
If you clean your mind from clutter and give it a break a few times a day, you will experience an even better, and by that I mean more productive, thinking time.
Pure creativity comes out of moments when your mind is not in charge - a ‘moment of clarity’ we usually call it!
You should test this:
Find a quite place - the toilet usually works wonders for that - LOL. Close your eyes, and try and think about ‘nothing’. If you focus on your breathing, and perhaps the temperature around you this should bring you to focus on your stillness.
Now stop thinking!!!
At first it’s very hard, as you’ll see - you even slip into thinking about not thinking… but after a few attempts you should be able to experience at least a few seconds of ‘mind-free’ time.
“What’s the point? I like my obsessive thinking - it keeps me company.” I hear you say.
It helps clear the slate of the mind. It gives you a few moments of peace, when you can almost take a step back and see different angles of your everyday life.
At the end of the day - I can’t force you to do it. And for some of you this will sound completely mad - and that’s ok. But for some of you this will make a lot of sense. You know who you are ;o)
And once you try it and see the extreme clarity and peace of mind it brings, you’ll want to do it 2, 3 times a day.
So try it - you have nothing to lose…
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