First off, a few bits and bobs that may seem irrelevant to SEO but really aren’t…

A shibolleth is a word, behavior, or certain language used to determine whether or not you belong to a certain group…this is a fairly simplistic definition but it’s basically a method of classification. And no, it’s not something they say in the theme song to Laverne and Shirley.

While I was in London last week, I went to the Tate Modern. There’s a crack in the floor there, which is an art installation by artist Doris Salcedo. Funnily enough, several people have actually fallen into said crack. Seriously. It’s a giant crack running through the floor, symbolizing the divide between groups. Which groups? Any, really. People who can visit an art show without falling into an exhibit compared to people who can’t. People who like modern art compared to people who don’t get it. Non-Europeans compared to Europeans. The list goes on and on.

This made me start thinking about whether, in SEO, we have our own shibboleth, something like a question that could be asked, whose answer would determine whether you were truly an SEO.

As you hopefully know, SEOMoz had a test awhile back, the SEO Expert Quiz, to give you a percentile score that would give you a clue as to whether or not you really know what you’re doing in this industry. This drew an amazing amount of criticism from people, many of whom received low scores…for the record mine was nothing to brag about but I did not feel the need to get on anyone’s blog and trash Rand for putting this out there.

The lovely Chris Dunn from Greenlight, a man of amazingly good musical taste, went out carousing with the fine-boned and delicate SEO Chicks (and two SEO Blokes) last week and mentioned asking potential employees about redirects, as a sort of screening process.

I’m sure there are many more instances of things like this, because there has to be a way to measure knowledge right? Therefore, we could have our SEO shibolleth couldn’t we?

Here’s the problem with this: who determines a baseline for knowledge in this industry? Yes, there are some things that every halfway decent SEO needs to know, but could all of us agree with what those things are? I’m sure that my idea of basics is completely different from an SEO who didn’t come from a programming background. A mostly PPC-rooted SEO will see the basics differently than someone who has only done cloaking. So how can we ever truly create something that will really tell us that yes, this SEO knows what he or she is doing or no, this SEO doesn’t have the faintest bit of knowledge? Should we let the leaders in this industry make the call? Even THEY wouldn’t agree, I bet.

Many industries have a standardized test. There are tests that must be passed before degrees are awarded, before licenses are issued, etc. You can’t get away from this…so will we ever really see one in a field so dynamic as SEO? It’s both art and science, both intuition and fact-based action. How can anything ever measure something so fluid? And, most importantly, is there a need for it?

I don’t think that there is. There is such a huge variety of techniques and mindsets in this industry, with no one of them truly being that much better than the others. We have SEOs from insanely varied backgrounds right now…we have technically trained SEOs and ones who couldn’t code HTML if their lives depended on it, all of whom are doing well. You can’t simply ask for the secret word and determine whether or not someone is going to get a number one ranking or drive a major amount of converting traffic to a site.

So, in the end, we probably won’t see our SEO shibolleth. At least we probably won’t see an industry-wide one, not any time soon. While manipulation of the SERPs is still possible, there really are no right or wrong answers. You can do well when you go completely against Google’s webmaster guidelines, just as you can do poorly while following them to the letter.

Chocbait may have been a miserable failure but coordinating your online and offline marketing activities never is. It is easy to become so close to an offline project that online is forgotten and landing pages for various campaigns are not in place in time to benefit the offline marketing push.

Large or small, most businesses engage in both online and traditional offline marketing. Magazine ads, TV ads, local paper ads, bookmarks, flyers and related marketing materials could be easily co-ordinated with your online offerings.

To use the example of a small shop in a town - The shop has an online store where they sell the higher volume goods and sometimes have their “one offs” online but the shop front (offline) focuses on advertising to their local community to bring customers in. They may place ads in their local magazine, print their own flyers, and they may even have printed bags with their logo/theme. This type of business could easily reflect their logo and colour themes in their advertising as well as in their website. They could use a mailing list to inform customers of sales in store and possibly attract customers in to the shop who may never walk by it. If you have a small business and don’t have a colour theme or logo, consider it. Logos and themes create an identity for your business and help people remember you when next they want to purchase.

Within larger companies, there can be a disconnect between online and ‘offline’ marketing departments. To help bridge the gap, online marketing folks could try to ensure they and offline meet regularly. One important reason to meet would be so everyone can ensure that when a new campaign goes live offline, online is there ready to take in the searchers. Coffee and doughnuts as enticements can help with the meetings!

Short term campaigns, sales and offers can often be better promoted using pay per click (PPC) advertising. PPC is an excellent way to drive traffic to short term offers with highly targeted landing pages. Landing pages for longer term promotions should also be live before the promotions go live offline to ensure spiders have been alerted through sitemaps to their existence and they are ready to receive link love from those writing about the campaigns.

There have been several excellent examples of online and offline co-ordinating including Sky’s “See Speak Surf” campaign where a landing page was created and PPC pointing to it as the TV commercials went live. While not everyone operates to those sorts of budgets, it is the idea which can be scaled to fit any business.

Co-ordinating online and offline advertising need not be complicated. This can be anything from something as simple as making sure the same logo, colours and information are online as well as in print, to creating landing pages and running a PPC campaign to promote a special event, sale or campaign. Bring online and offline together and benefit both customers and your business.

Well it looks like I’ve managed to put in a post today before any of my other lady Chicks - which I started thinking of as almost impossible - LOL…

So I’ve been thinking a lot about systematising lately and how important it is to do that for your business - regardless of where you are in the pecking order (SEO Chicks… pecking order….. I sense a pun alert…).

Converting as many processes of your job into easy to follow, consistently performing systems is not that easy to do, but it is soo worth it when done and done properly. I’ve experienced the full benefits of documentation in a big way in my previous job, so when I started setting up Reviewlicious.com I made sure systems and process simplification was in the core of the whole thing.

Not easy to do from the start, because while there are set ways for some of the things that happen in an online business, some factors are a partial unknown until the business is up and running… Anyway, enough theory, I decided to put together a quick list of how to go about systematising your processes.

BTW: We would really appreciate any input you can give - especially if it is to suggest things that have worked for you in the past, that I haven’t mentioned below.

One last thing before I get on to the list :o). It helps if you think of this formula:

YOUR BUSINESS = Bunch of PROCESSES = A Whole Lot of TASKS

So in essence you have to break down your business into a bunch of tasks to be able to re-construct them as processes and build this entire system - your business.

• First you need to identify the areas that need systematizing:
  
  
  • Look at areas where people make mistakes often.

  
  

  • Places where the results are not only inconsistent but also disappointing to you.

  
  

  • Activities on which you’re spending too much time.

  
  

  • Activities that you’re avoiding like the plague ’cause you don’t like them - systematising those and putting them on a process map gives you a chance to outsource them easily and never have to do them again - *wink*

  
  

  • Or activities that don’t usually run smoothly, but if they do you can gain extra profits.




• Make a list of those areas and prioritise them in terms of their impact on your business. Naturally, you can’t do everything at once so prioritising will help you make the quickest changes in the areas that matter the most.




• Tackle the ones that are the most important first.




• Write down how the process is working at the moment. I sketch that on paper in a visual way - like a process map.




• Mark down what parts are working effectively at the moment.




• List who’s involved in the process and what’s their significance to the process - this will clear your head in terms of - “Do I really need this extra person’s input?”.




• Then identify gaps, mistakes and areas where things can be shortened, improved, or outsourced.




• Now write down how you think the process should work, incorporating all your findings and also getting input from the people involved in the process.




• Next, you get yourself in front of your computer and in front of a process mapping tool. What you use is entirely up to you to be honest as long as it does the job and is easy to manipulate and update. In the old days we’d do all that on paper, but I don’t need to tell you how “easy” that is to change and improve… The tool I use now that I’m on Mac is OmniGraffle - it’s an awesome little tool that is an absolute pleasure to use. If you’re on PC, then the market leader (and a tool I’ve used extensively) is SmartDraw. Not cheap but if your business depended on it - it’s worth it right.

  There are also a few free tools around the internet, but I’ve not used any of them so I can’t recommend anything - please feel free fill me in if you have a recommendation.




• So this next step is very logical - start putting your paper thoughts on to your process mapping tool. Once you have the basic layout, you can stand back and look at each component separately.




• Have a look and decide if anything needs shifting. Make sure you use the correct components and shapes for your actions. This helps with your map’s readability. Let’s say you mapped a process and then decided to outsource that process, the process map you have should be able to be read by anyone…




• I love Wikipedia and once more they provide a very good explanation of the shapes and components of a Process Map or a Flowchart.




• Here are a few things that you need to look for in terms of spotting areas where things can be improved:
  • Can it be simplified?
  • Can some steps be combined?
  • What steps can be outsourced?
  • Are there any bottlenecks?
  • Can some steps be automated - either by a piece of existing software or perhaps a piece of code you can implement?
  • Can you do without any of the steps you’ve listed - like cut out a middleman and go straight to a supplier?
  • Get the help of a person that really knows this process subject and ask for their opinion too - if you’re not sure if everything is looked at?




• Save your document - :o)




• Distribute it to everyone involved in the process, and consider sending it to the people who are affected by the actual process. Awareness breeds support… well most of the time anyway. Often, in bigger organisations, you may have to get people involved to ‘buy into’ the new process, but the outcomes and improvements are so worth the trouble.

So now you have the process all mapped, you need to do the same for the other processes you identified.

This is all an ongoing thing. It will take a while to put your entire business into processes, but even when they are all done - your job isn’t. Things just get a lot easier.

You may find that some of the processes eventually become obsolete, and that you develop the need for new processes, so the whole thing never really goes away - how ominous…

The ‘upside’ is that you get to streamline your business by making every part of it fully visible. If your businesses’ “cogs” are visible you’ve got more of a chance in optimising critical areas and making everything work even better. All in all process maps ensure consistency of results and protects you from costly mistakes and doing tasks you don’t necessarily want to do yourself :o)

We talk a lot about making sites good for users, making them accessible, easily crawlable, and well-designed. We advise everyone to write good content and carefully analyze their metrics. We talk about knowing your users and catering to them, and, above all else, we speak of SEO as being a combination of art and science.

So where is the bit about simplicity in all of this? Is there room for sparseness in today’s SEO campaign?

The other day when I was going to the grocery store, there were a few volunteers outside collecting for a charity. Their slogan was so utterly simple that it made me really think about the over-the-top manner in which many of us attack our marketing. It was “Help Retarded Children.” No embellishment, no flair, no politically correct “mentally” added to the “retarded” part of it. It did the trick. I didn’t see a soul pass by without giving.

Now obviously this is the kind of thing that any sane person would not have a problem with…I mean seriously, if you don’t have a soft spot for children with mental, physical, or developmental issues, you’re inhuman as far as I’m concerned and give me your name so I can beat your ass when I meet you. So, while I’d naturally give anything I can to this sort of organization, and I don’t take their work lightly at all, I am, for the purpose of this blog, using their simple message to illustrate a point.

Obviously I am not taking my own advice and being simplistic and to the point, but I am not really known for practicing what I preach. I’m in awe of this actually, this simplicity. I tend to be a bit bombastic (especially after all that time spent studying Romantic poetry in college) and, on the odd occasion, have a slight tendency to exaggerate and embellish everything until, verbally, it becomes the picture that I see in my head. This is good, sometimes, but it can completely draw attention away from the point being made. I think (and hope) that it’s fine to be over the top in a blog, and I really can’t be anything else, but some messages need to be simple. It makes me wonder why on earth I didn’t ask someone else to write this though…

Simplicity comes back to making something about the user. It’s not just about a simple message either…simplicity needs to take the form of many things, from the number of clicks it takes to get somewhere on a site to your overall design. When you optimize it’s easy to lose sight of this as you add more keywords and jazz up your slogan. If something’s working, it’s human nature to try and make it even better. However, it might be wise to do less and see what THAT gets you. In the spirit of doing less, I’m going to end now rather than go on and on about some ridiculous bit of music trivia.

Chocolate makes me happy. It says so on my Moo cards and so I thought after seeing how much fun Chris Hooley seemed to have with drinkbait that I would shamelessly rip off errr… borrow that template and try and meet people by giving away chocolate.

Drinkbait was a fantastic idea specifically drawn up by Chris to achieve a particular end. He bought “nips” (which I only know another connotation for so am clueless about what this has to do with drink) and went off getting pictured with various SEOs. I wasn’t drunk when I looked at the images and I thought were great but now (also sober) I can’t find them. “Drinkbait” was followed up by someone with “hatbait” and now me with “chocbait”. I’m looking to meet people and get to know them – the love I want isn’t just from links… It’s in the hearts and minds of chocolate fans everywhere. Link building has never been more fun (or yummy).

Now, chocolate to a chocoholic like myself is a sacred thing. No cheap chocolate for me, I was going for French style chocolates which come in cute boxes and are about the price of a bottle of booze. As this is international travel we are talking about here, and chocolate had to travel with me, I needed to test the idea out and so the Ad:tech chocbait test was launched. Armed with high quality truffles, I went to the SEO chicks drinks thing after Ad:tech and sprung my trap. On an unsuspecting table of SEO people, I offered high quality cocoa dusted truffles.

No one liked my chocolate but other SEO chicks. Yep – you read it right… Chocobait was a miserable failure. How, in my wildest nightmares could I have possibly envisioned an era when chocolate would be REFUSED?!?! Yes – chocbait was not accepted when offered.

I was devastated. Returning home from Ad:tech with an untouched box of truffles in my cookie bag (hey – chocolate in all it’s many forms makes me happy – including chocolate chip cookies), I slumped on the couch and told husband I was going to rank well for chocbait and miserable failure because that’s what it was. He tried to console me with hot chocolate made from flakes of real chocolate in milk but I was inconsolable. The hot chocolate was good though

I’m a firm advocate of marketing techniques to test things out. For chocbait, this means an A:B test. Chocbait will happen again in a different way at a different venue in order to test alternates. Current chocbait, as it is in the testing phase, does not include “branded” link requests nor does it attempt to inspire linking (though friendship is encouraged). Final version chocbait, if it does indeed make it past the testing phase to PubCon, will involve photos, branded notes attached to the chocolate and lots of fun (I hope).

I’d love to hear some ideas about how to improve chocbait or ideas you might have about how chocbait can successfully leave beta and emerge at PubCon in final release version.

We have been getting a surge of comment spam that is obviously being done by very apologetic individuals. As a good Southerner, I appreciate the manners involved but let me list out a few things that won’t get you the links you want…

Saying something like “I like site give me link!” This is definitely to the point. I appreciate that, seriously, but at least give me a reason! Liking a site isn’t a good enough reason for us to allow your comment through. And of course you like our site. It rocks. Join the fanclub (cough).

Adding in a frowny face emoticon. While this always makes me laugh since it expresses the utter anguish of link building and the despair of everday life, it’s the equivalent of me letting my giant bloodhound take a dump in your yard and putting a bright orange flag on it that has, as does your comment, a little frownie face on it, instead of cleaning it up.

Writing the pitiful words “I’m sorry.” This makes me sad and that’s not good since I make others sad by moaning and groaning to them. If you do this, you are responsible for black clouds forming wherever I go. I’m in London at the moment so it’s not too tough but please, try and let me have ONE good day.

Making a comment about how “wow we have the same name!” Jules Joyce, this doesn’t apply to Facebook. That friend request was awesome! I’ll accept any friend request usually, since I’m needy, but I’m not dragging down my site with an outbound link just because you’re Julianne Adair Joyce Jr.

Saying something negative about anything that we have written. Ok this is a joke. Contrary to what you may believe, we have simply never received any negative comments (more coughing.)

Things that WILL get your comments posted include being a mac daddy black hat spammer with excellent taste in music, complimenting us on being attractive and well-mannered and clever and having good hair and smiling nicely, referencing a particularly good point that we made and seconding it, listing out how you once thought something but the SEO Chicks changed your mind and now you’re a fully functional human being who gives money to charity and keeps a clean house, and/or sending links to photos of your private parts.

So please, if you’re going to comment, follow these guidelines. I could be spending that blog admin time surfing porn. I wouldn’t, but I could.

Weddings weddings weddings…it’s all the London SEO crowd can think about now that my lovely Viking Lisa has apparently agreed to marry Rob Kerry IF, and it’s a big IF, the monkey can get a top rank in Google for the term ‘weddings.’ She obviously doesn’t know that I went out with him last night and will be seeing him again tonight though.

I have always wanted to be a bridesmaid in Vegas. Anita wants to be the flower girl. This is big stuff for the SEO Chicks so please, digg and sphinn til these two are forced to let me buy a lovely silk dress with a matching parasol. Like I don’t have that already but still…

You can read more about this as Rob attempts to lay blame on the Nottster for the wedding.

Update: please note that I have refrained from my usual “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” question here. I’m trying to show a bit of class while I’m in London this week, in order to prevent the Brits from staying red with humiliation the whole time I’m here.

SEO Chicks has a facebook app!  Yes, that’s right, you can get all the latest and greatest SEO chick action direct to your facebook page.  You know you want to, so add http://apps.facebook.com/seochicksapp/ to your facebook profile and be the envy of your friends!

At Future of Web Apps I had the pleasure of interviewing Eran Shir from Dapper about web applications and their recent developments involving contextual advertising the likes of which I’d not seen before.  One novel use of the application was to embed it in a recipe site and use it to display the cost of ingredients for a recipe and possibly purchase them.  I can think of thousands of affiliate sites that can immediately start adding value by publishing articles and letting this app sell stuff for them.

Their search shown at FOWA is so close to a Google-buster it was a bit scary (not presented as such) but limitations still need to be ironed out as one audience member pointed out.  It is just brilliantly smart.  This is the future of the web and I’m so excited that I got to see their presentation and interview Eran.

During my conversations with Eran I mentioned that I blogged here at SEO Chicks and how I would love for the Chicks to have a facebook app.  No sooner had I said it than was it done and now you too can have SEO chicks with attitude proudly displayed on your Facebook page.

Leveraging the power of social media is one of the hottest topics right now. With everyone from Paul Walsh and his “Great Facebook Debate” to where I work and their “Social Media for Business” conference, everyone is trying to work social media in to their conferencing and marketing mix.

I believe social media can be both used for good and marketing but I also believe in good men & other mythical creatures. Provided the marketing people understand that this is not a push medium and that the web and all it entails is pull, strategies can be successfully deployed within social media/networks.  One of the biggest mistakes a firm can make is to cling relentlessly to the old model of push advertising and fail to realise that it has become a pull environment.

In my dream world, I run a business people want to work for because it is such a cool place to hang.  In this world, I’ve embraced social media and used it as a vehicle to create and promote brand ambassadors.  People demonstrate their commitment to being a brand ambassador by engaging with the brand over social media and blogging about it or the like.  I own the first 10 SERPs for my desired keyword phrases because of this activity.

It can be reality for a company to own the top search spots by understanding brand ambassadors, engaging over social media and giving back to the community.  There is room in the advertising and PR budget to do this if you look at the possible long-term returns.

Now, if I want to own any of  the top 3 spots in the SEO chicks Facebook app when folk log on, I’d better start writing more!

In an industry as innovative as online marketing, why do we fall in line behind certain concepts and blindly follow rules set up by massive corporations? I saw a comment recently that asked “why are you letting Google tell you how to run your site?”, and I’m paraphrasing, which isn’t overly obvious since I used quotation marks but anyway, this question goes to the heart of what I simply cannot understand about SEOs right now.

Why, indeed, are we letting the search engine companies determine every move we make?

We don’t have to, you know. Yes, if you want to do well online you’re probably going to have to deal with Google BUT that doesn’t mean that you have to blindly obey every single one of their rules on how to conduct your business online. I understand that there are some simple guidelines that we should all follow with regards to the web, but they extend mainly to making a site accessible to disabled users and just general usability.

There’s a great old punk song by Punishment of Luxury, called “Puppet Life”, which has the lyrics “Your demands are my role, lost in space and time I crawl for you.” Well, this is my attempt to sneak in another punk reference so there you go. It’s on topic too, mostly. Why are we letting someone pull our strings so easily?

Maybe it’s a white hat vs. black hat mentality, but I was a lot happier when I was cloaking every site I worked on. That was honestly dishonest. I could easily not follow any engine’s guidelines. Now, working in a more white hat capacity, considering I am dealing with other people’s livelihoods I have to be a bit more careful. That being said, it sure as hell does not mean that I’m obeying every law Google sets down. Some of them really are just really, really idiotic.

Let’s take a look at three of Google’s more ridiculous edicts.

“Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.” Well, I am sure not doing that one. I go to great lengths to write about how you should never, ever advertise a link as being purchased for advertising. Who is really going to follow this guideline? Why do their jobs for them? I may even wear an “I Buy Links. Ban Me.” t-shirt in Vegas. If you’re really following this one, you need to go watch nun porn (but don’t make it a habit! hahahahahaha) or something and expand your worldview to be a bit less naive and sheeplike.

“Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.” This kind of disqualifies most of what I do actually, so again, not following this one. I love a trick. I love the way they say “tricks” too, implying that any manipulation on your part is a low blow to online humanity, like an acre of trees will burn and kittens will be torn apart by wild dogs every time you blink your eyes now. Isn’t everything we do in SEO designed to improve search engine rankings? What’s the definition of a trick anyway?

This is qualified with “A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you.” Well hellfire. I’d feel comfortable telling my mom that yeah, she hasn’t used too much hairspray, even as pinecones and pieces of airplane engines bounce off the top of her head. I’d tell anyone anything. So the comfort level aspect is kind of useless here. I’m comfortable saying just about anything. Ask Rob Kerry.

“If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value.” Well, I’m not an affiliate but if I were, I wouldn’t really give a damn whether my site added value. Adds value to what, anyway? As long as it added value to my pockets and I could buy raspberry mocha lattes, leather boots, and punk rock t-shirts, I’d be finearooney. Not to trash affiliates, but I don’t really see this as an area that exists for the good of kittens and embroidery.

I do realize that not everyone attempts to be sweet and nice and follow Google’s guidelines, of course, and let me take the time to say to these people that I love you all. I’m just worried about the tendencies of the masses to follow along with who currently leads the pack in this industry. Reading blog comments is simply an amazing glimpse into this culture…everyone wants to be allied with the right people, and it can be fairly sickening at times. The major personal attacks, in particular, are really showing a lack of class. I will admit to laughing at an old ass clown comment that was directed at many of my favorite people though. That was just plain funny. What’s an ass clown anyway? Is he named Smiley McCracken? Is his wife Gladys?

We haven’t been privileged enough to host a massive fight on our blog yet, or in a bar even, but those seem to be all over the place, with everyone agreeing with the right people just to see their name in print. I do confess to loving this kind of thing, and when there are well-done remarks, it’s great stuff. It’s when you get comments from people saying “yeah! good one. You tell him!” that I want to smash my head into a wall. OK I may have commented like that (especially to Lisa) a few times but I’d probably been drinking. Like I said, I kind of enjoy an online fight that doesn’t involve someone trashing me, but when it goes on and on just so everyone can choose a side, it’s useless.

Just remember, bad things have happened when people blindly fell in line and gave up their own desire to be independent thinkers. Don’t believe something just because a certain SEOlebrity or engine says it’s the way to do things.

Sorry for the non-witty title. I struggled with “The SEO Chicks Want More Girls” but that didn’t sound quite right…

The SEO Chicks are proud to introduce a new guest blogger section because a) we’re tired of writing all the damn time and b) there are some insanely fantastic women that we know in this industry and we’d love to showcase them. We’ve all been as busy as a cat covering it up here on the blog, so it’s something we’re very excited about.

We’re also really fond of some of the blogs that aren’t constantly on the radar, so look for a few guest bloggers that may have kept things quiet until now. We’re not quiet types, although I do pretend to be at times what with being Southern and carrying a parasol all the time, but we do recognize that much of the best perspective in this field comes from people who are marching to the beat of their own inner Clem Burke.

So we’ll keep you posted (ha!) on this new series and please feel free to make suggestions on which writers you’d like to see here. To qualify, these writers should be either 1) female or 2) happy to make public appearances wearing women’s clothes.

You can either just leave a comment on this post or email us at seochicks[at]yahoo.co.uk