Welcome to the team; Annabel Hodges

I’m so excited to welcome the wonderful Annabel Hodges aka Search Panda to the SEO-Chicks blogging crew. We’ve been eyeing her up for ages thinking she is probably crazy enough to become one of the SEO Chicks, and turns out she is. Yay!

We asked Annabel a few questions before “hiring” her into the crew of course, some very qualifying, difficult and important questions:

1. How did you get into SEO?
I was a translator back in the day and getting very very bored of it. I started trying to learn a little more about search and analytics in my spare time as my housemate got me interested in it and I got hooked. I then got a job with a small design/development agency who had just won some multinational clients and had a choice: train linguists up in search or train search marketers to speak other languages. Simple decision!

2. What makes your SEO heart tick?
Two things mainly:
1. Data. And by that I mean those times when you really manage to get some juicy findings that suddenly change the way you look at what you’ve been doing.
2. Direct input/output of work. Over the years I’ve realised it’s pretty rare to be in a job where you have that satisfaction. On your own sites, if not your clients. You always get to tweak and learn and change and see, monitoring the direct impact of what you do and inputting back into that cycle. So many people work in a job where their day-to-day efforts get lost in a bigger machine.

(more…)

Interview Alert! It’s Wordstream’s Elisa Gabbert!

Elisa Gabbert is the content manager at WordStream, where she runs the WordStream Internet Marketing Blog and helps market the company’s AdWords software, PPC management services and keyword research tools. She also writes poetry and perfume criticism. She currently lives in Denver. You can follow her on Twitter at @egabbert (but expect tasteless jokes and bad puns).

 

The lovely Elisa Gabbert

1. Can you give us a summary of your SEO experience thus far? What is your current niche?

I got into the SEO industry about five years ago, sort of by accident – I was working as an editorial assistant on a website at a big media company. Their model was to run a bunch of highly targeted websites (each aimed at a slice of the technology market, mostly B2B but some B2C as well – stuff like Oracle, Linux, server storage, etc.) and sell advertising against those sites. When I started, no one even knew what SEO was, but it slowly became a bigger and bigger part of our strategy company-wide. Most people hated it – the company employed a lot of journalists who were coming from a print background – but a few people saw how important it was and some (crazy nerds) even found it interesting (oh, hi). So I moved into an “SEO specialist” role, making recommendations for a group of websites.

Now I work as a copywriter for a venture-backed startup that offers search marketing software and services, including a PPC management platform and various SEO tools (free and paid). We like to say this is the Olympics of search, because we’re competing to rank on search marketing terms with other companies that, like us, really know search marketing. So it’s very challenging, and VERY META.

2. How do you feel about the recent Google privacy changes that will now prevent us from seeing logged-in Google keyword data in Google Analytics? It’s apparently not the case for PPC. Fair or not?

I actually just blogged about this news. I tend to side with the “privacy schmivacy” folks – clearly other motives were driving this decision. I think it sucks because that’s such useful data. The worry is that it will eventually affect all organic referrals, as opposed to just a fraction as it does now. Then keyword research/optimization for SEO officially becomes total guesswork.

3. Any tips on how to use PPC data for organic SEO and link building?

Especially now that Google is taking away some of your organic search query data, it’s super important to keep an eye on your search query report if you do PPC. Assuming you’re using broad match and modified broad match (and you should be, in concert with negative keywords), you’ll be able to discover all kinds of new keywords that you can then incorporate into your content strategy. If you manage pretty large, complicated accounts, you might want to take a look at Chad Summerhill’s tips for search query mining – he includes a link to an Excel download that can help you sort through the data. You can download the full series in PDF as part of our negative keyword e-book.

4. Besides Wordstream tools, what else do you use?

I usually use our own tool for keyword research, but I sometimes consult the Google keyword tool for comparison. I also use Google Analytics. Otherwise it’s mostly me and a Word doc. And Twitter! I’m on Twitter all day. As a writer, I can focus on content strategy and leave most of the hardcore geek stuff to our SEO guy. I avoid Excel whenever possible.

5. What are the best resources available for someone with a small budget, new to PPC?

How small is small? If we’re talking really tiny, Google offers “AdWords Express” which requires very little effort on the advertiser’s part, but you give up a lot of control, so that’s iffy unless you’re talking a budget of like $100 a month and no experience with PPC. Beyond that, I’d recommend reading a lot of blogs to keep up with PPC best practices and the constant changes and additions to the AdWords interface. Tom Demers is my point man for keeping up with AdWords. And here’s a big list of awesome PPC blogs from BoostCTR. (Speaking of which, BoostCTR is an affordable way to get help with your ad copy.) Attend webinars, download white papers – take advantage of all the free resources that PPC companies offer in order to get your email address. The amount you can afford to spend on getting help with PPC will depend on your monthly budget. If you’re spending $1,000 a month or more, you can probably afford to invest in some tools.

6. What’s a typical day like for you?

The first thing I do every morning – after checking my email and putting out any fires – is publish a new blog post on the WordStream blog. We try to do at least one new post every week day. The blog is my baby. Then I push it out through Twitter and poke around on TweetDeck to see what people are talking about. The rest of my day is some combination of meetings (talking strategy with the rest of the marketing team, planning for new features or product launches, etc.) and writing and/or editing (articles for our own blog, guest posts and contributed articles, email marketing, white papers, and so on and so on), with a little social media and link promotion sprinkled in for good measure.

7. Name your dream client and tell us why.

Anthropologie, because maybe we could work out some kind of discount? (Editor’s note: you and me both, sister.)

8. What’s the best piece of SEO advice you’ve ever received? Ever given?

I think the best advice I got was from Larry Kim, who told me to copy Wikipedia. Who else, aside from Google itself, enjoys first-page rankings for such a wide array of keywords? So we try to emulate them on a smaller scale – create encyclopedic content on a topic (for us, that’s search marketing); organize it taxonomically; interlink heavily; use the keyword in the URL, title, first sentence, subheads, image file names and alt text; build anchor text links; etc….

As for given? My favorite piece of advice is: When you don’t know what to blog about, consult your analytics. Inevitably, you’ll find a traffic-driving search query that you don’t have a dedicated post for yet. So write it, duh!
9. Write an SEO haiku. Just kidding!! Who’d win in a fight between Martin Amis and Ian McEwan?

I don’t know, they’re both pretty namby-pamby, wouldn’t you say? I think the ghost of Kingsley Amis, annoyed by their bickering, would hangover-vomit on them from above. (Editor’s note: I think Amis is less so than McEwan but McEwan is creepier, therefore he’d win. However that 9/11 book by Martin proved that he’s a bit scary, so…ok Amis would win.)

10. What’s the biggest bullshit SEO advice going around today? I’m quite annoyed by all of the “must do” items being pushed about. We didn’t have freaking wordpress tags in place and we still ranked, damn you all!!

The perpetual thorn in my side is the obsession with getting into Google News. Sure, it can send lots of traffic, but I think evergreen content is more useful for our business model.

11. If you were not working in SEO, what would you be doing, besides staying home watching Oprah reruns and eating moonpies? Or is that just me?

I’m a writer, so I’d spend my days writing about one of my other interests – mostly frivolous things like perfume and outfits, but I’m also into lofty pretentious stuff like poetry and women’s rights and “culture.” So if it weren’t for this SEO gig I’d probably be our generation’s Joan Didion.

12. Who are the most fun SEOs you’ve met and why? For the sake of not having to arsekiss this cannot include any of your bosses.

Can it include you or does that count as arsekissing? (Editor’s note: I’d have accepted that HAD YOU MENTIONED ME.) My former bosses, Tom Demers and Ken Lyons (who now run Measured SEM), are a laugh a minute. I’ve met a lot of great people through WordStream. If Twitter counts as a “meetingplace,” I’m a big fan of Dr. Pete.

13. What’s the ickiest search you’ve ever stumbled across? When I was researching the types of chickens I wanted to get (shut up) I accidentally searched for “black sex links” instead of “black sex link chickens.” Yeah. Unfun. Luckily it was a web search, not an image search.

I’m totally impressed that you have chickens. Please invite me over for breakfast. (I mean to eat eggs, not the chickens.) I don’t think I’ve ever “accidentally” searched for kinky sex tricks, but one of the common keyword referrals for my blog is “dave matthews band tattoos.” How icky is that? Also “emo gay sex blogspot,” but that’s just cute.

Now this is Julie talking…I realize there are a lot of links to Wordstream here so before any of you start thinking they’re giving me free stuff or in any way influencing me, let me say that I WISH THEY DID. They don’t. I just think Elisa is three hoots and I like to see literate folk in our industry. Thanks for the interview Ms. Gabbert!!

Book Review – SEO ROI: Rules and Tactics of Advanced SEOs

I’ve been feeling a little SEOfatigued of late. Sick of hearing the same old regurgitated advice and seeing the same old presentation. I’ve found myself withdrawing from Twitter and retreating to smaller communities where the discussion is much more specific and emerges from real, in-the-field observations and results. And you know what? I’m learning more, much faster, and in a shorter amount of time. So, this isn’t a Twitter-diss; but more a natural evolution of my own approach to (constantly) learning SEO. I was pleasantly surprised and pleased when this book landed in my inbox reason being the content is very much of the insider-perspective, using situational examples as opposed to any grand SEO theory.

About the Author, Editor and Book

“SEO ROI: Advanced SEOs’ 7 Curiously Obvious Rules and 30 Singular Tactics That Illustrate Them” is authored by Gabriel Goldenberg an SEO and CRO consultant of considerable experience, with a range of industry speaking experience.

SEO ROI is edited by Richard Kershaw, who again has considerable experience of many areas of online marketing from both blue-chip and affiliate perspectives and is currently running the successful gift experience website Wish.co.uk

Download a free chapter of the book.

Style

Divided into two sections, the first looking at overarching guiding principles, “the Rules”, which include sound advice such as “Teach Yourself” (rule 2); and the second section (30 singular tactics) looks at very specific, situational dilemmas and challenges any SEO or marketer in-the-field may face, with advanced solutions that solve or circumvent the issue with an ROI-positive solution. Each of the 30 tactics is premised on adherence to “the rules”.

As an example Rule 2 starts with useful points on how and where to seek knowledge within the industry; from blogs to books to good ole’ fashioned networking in the real world.

I particularly enjoyed the section on testing – classic A/B split-test methods looking at the object, existing theories, independent and dependent variables and how to measure the effects on the dependent variable. Included is a great step by step walk-thru in testing; from Step 1 “create a hypothesis, to Step 5 “Measure and Analyze”. There’s also a great deal of emphasis placed on critical thinking, as a mindset or effective approach for SEO practise, observation and test; and this is espoused throughout, including detailing some fundamental steps to thinking critically. Something that resonated quite clearly for me was Rule 5 “Define the Problem”. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen clients and staff react in something of a panic, making all kinds of plans and solutions prior to refining and defining exactly what a perceived issue may be.

Sensibly, Rule 6, recommends challenging assumptions; something I wholeheartedly agree with. Without those that dare to challenge there’s no progress surely? I was particularly pleased to see a section devoted to Inductive Validity “Inductive validity is another way of measuring the truth of an argument. Instead of setting the threshold as truth in 100% of the cases, inductive validity looks for a claim to be probably true.”

Here’s the thing…
DO NOT SKIP “The Rules” and head straight to the paydirt! Whilst the later sections of the book may be naturally more absorbing and resonating for a practising SEO I can assure you that this structure and the content therein is extremely valid.

Best Bits

I don’t want to give away too much of the excellent content detailed in the 30 tactics, but to highlight a few tactics that were fresh thinking for me: Writing Conditional  CSS for Higher Conversion – details a range of four solutions, including the ethics of each method, Link Prospecting Using Demographic Matching – with guidance on how to; and in particular a tactic Gab has described as “Message Matching”, which is an awesome tactic and unfortunately something I can’t really describe without giving away the crown jewels.

Room for Improvement?

I couldn’t find fault with this. And I’m picky.

Overall

A truly advanced book for experienced practitioners that are in a position to evaluate solutions based on wider business objectives and ethical frameworks.

Don’t just take my word for it – get your free chapter and see for yourself.

Think Your PPC Sucks? Find Out For Sure!

I scored better than 8% of Adwords accounts in my spend range. Wow, that’s…humiliating, and quite humbling.

Wordstream has an awesome new Adwords performance grader tool that’s free and compares your account to others in your spend range (that they have previously graded, but they say that it’s millions) using more than 60 different factors. You get a general idea of how you’re doing then recommendations, in sections, for improvement. I like.

grade

Naturally, this all ties into their PPC management software, which is available on a free 7-day trial. As PPC isn’t my main thing, I won’t be trying that out, but I do really like comparison systems, as I think they give us a great idea for where we stand in, um, comparison to everyone else. Everyone else, that is, who has run their account through this system. Still, it’s millions!!

So in addition to learning that I’m worse than 92% of people in my spend range, what else can this tool tell me?

  • I am wasting a lot of money and should add negative keywords to my campaign.
  • My keywords are too broad. They are like the backside of my fattest chicken, S. Epatha Merkerson.
  • I have no good longtails.
  • I am neglecting my account and probably losing ground to competitors due to a full 0 recent actions in the past month. That is dedication that you don’t find with just anyone.
  • I don’t have enough ads for each group. However, with my worst ad showing a CTR of over 4% (the expected average is 2.3%) I am still smirking slightly.
  • I have way, way fewer landing pages than my competitors. I like it that way though, so take that! Why create a landing page just for PPC? I know people do it, but how is that any different than cloaking? OK I’m joking. That rhymes.

Good news though! My Quality Score kicks ass!! I’m better than the rest of you monkeys with a 7.4 compared to the average of 5.2. Go me!!

My CTR is also awesome!!

OK that’s really all I’m doing well here…but seriously, this is one cool FREE tool. My favorite part is the end where there are happy green thumbs up images or scary and sad red thumbs down ones. I’m 50/50.

Now, I have said many times that I love free tools…I also really like tools that spit out data in eye-pleasing ways. I may be about 6, but I do love the graphics here because it makes the analysis much less boring. Once your report is ready it emails you a permanent link in case you want to look at it over and over and over again, or, more professionally, make tweaks to your campaign, then check your performance later on.

Here’s the thing about this tool: it does not compare your campaign to others in your niche, which means that while it is very valuable, you still can’t determine that just because you don’t have the same performance for asbestos removal as you do for discounted boots, you must suck. As mentioned above, it also compares your performance to others who have run their accounts through the grader. Still, since I like to look at performance in terms of trending rather than exact metrics usually, I do think that it’s really useful. I’d also find this quite nice to show to a client who balks at making changes. For example, I don’t have conversion tracking on this account for various reasons. Yes I know it’s critical, so don’t fuss at me, but still, I do not have it. I am not always at liberty to choose the ad wording or keywords either. A report like this is helpful because then my client doesn’t just think it’s me deciding to do something crazy just because I’m bored.

So try it out. It’s free, it’s cool, and you get to either feel superior to others or you can cry into your warm cereal at dinnertime.

Loss of Trust in Branding

On August 16th Abercrombie and Fitch asked Jersey Shore cast members not to wear their brand. Pretty rich coming from the company who was making pushup bikini tops for children.  Still,it was definitely a very clever marketing idea involving two tacky enterprises. Abercrombie certainly were all over the media right before all the kids who wear their overpriced and boring clothes went back to school. Clever indeed.

In my own tacky marketing move, here’s a gratuitous and totally irrelevant shot of hottie Raveonettes singer Sune Rose Wagner, doing nothing at all related to this industry or this post. He’s just maddeningly handsome. I think it’s quite obvious that he’s sadly toasting not being married to me right now. Poor man.

Sune Rose Wagner

At first this did look like a smart attempt to prevent brand corruption. While I happily confess to never having watched that show, I am bombarded by images of Snooki with her big hair and tiny outfits and The Situation’s abs (less hair but still unnerving) every time I read my (FREE…I swear on my grandma’s grave that I did not subscribe!!) copy of the heinous rag Star Magazine. You can’t go to Harris Teeter and buy the usual box of wine and a can of Pringles without seeing these guys whilst trying to figure out why your shit won’t scan whilst (again yes sorry, I like the word) the cashier stands there judging and not coming over to help you. Yeah, I know the damn Uscan is open people, but it never works for me so that is why I’m in THE LINE FOR AN ACTUAL PERSON. Anyway, initially I thought of how Tommy Hilfiger became a joke in the States as it went from classic American sportswear to something a bit more…urban. 10 years ago, who’d have imagined that Tommy would hit Axl Rose? Brand corruption did it, I am telling you. I won’t even get into the Burberry-chavs thing in the UK because it is still a source of agony for me, owning Burberry and traveling to the UK where I am unable to display the goods (the bag I mean) without someone asking me where I’m from in Essex. I don’t even have a fake tan so not sure why they make that assumption.

Brand corruption is obviously not what this Abercrombie stunt was about though, but initially I did think “wow, they are doing the right thing here, even if it’s just plain obnoxious” but after a bit, I realized that it’s just another way to generate buzz. It’s linkbait. I used to like things like this and appreciate them for their cleverness, but now? Not so much. Yes, they got loads of attention, but what did it actually bring them? Did more people buy their clothes? Did anyone forget they once offered padded bikini tops to kids? Press of any sort can be a good thing but will their historical bouts of nuttiness simply lead to their own brand corruption? Other lower-priced retailers already sell Abercrombie-clone items anyway (with the exception of the aforementioned padded bikinis for kids.) If your polo shirts are $12 you can probably get away with pissing people off or just irritating them, but if they’re $68? Jaysis. You need to be making a name for yourself by giving a free $68 polo shirt to kids in need every time some frat boy buys one.

Speaking of good ideas like that, here’s another one…a photo of Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand, who is not guilty of anything to do with brand corruption, polo shirts, or bouffants! He is only guilty of being insanely good looking and fronting a truly amazing band. People reading blogs like to see images it seems, and he’s prettier than Snooki.

Alex Kapranos

See how my ridiculous interjection of shots of men I like kind of take away from my message? Hey, at least I’m not selling a polo for $68. Tacky seems to be the new thing though, so I’ll roll with it.

Is this like the boy who cried wolf? Is it like Lyndon Antcliff’s divisive hooker story that brought out issues of trust and industry ethics? (for the record I thought that story was highly entertaining and honestly, anyone believing it should stop sniffing glue every morning) Not to pick on Lyndon at all here, but if you had the idea that he was indeed an untrustworthy shyster and he wrote something that was on the edge of believability again, would you trust him? I would, of course, as I actually understand satire and don’t think the Irish are really actually being told to eat babies. However, if Abercrombie does come out and say that they’re donating $10m to help clean up Vermont after Hurricane Irene, will it make you drive to the mall, risking being shot (or is that just here in Greensboro?), to go buy a $68 polo and hopefully see some nude models? Or will you just sit back and wait for the punchline? I’ll sit back and wait.

Coming back from PR hijinks can of course be done. Alec Baldwin has a successful show after that phone call. My lovely husband still gets us business after his performance in Seattle. However, it takes a lot of work and honestly, after dealing with fallout, why bother in the first place? Broken trust is very hard to rebuild. It’s difficult to trust a person who has betrayed you. It’s hard to try another BK veggie burger after you’ve bitten into one containing an ink pen. Hey, at least it wasn’t a tooth I suppose…

Lastly, let me leave you with this image, as it would be quite rude of me not to showcase Udo Kier. QUITE RUDE.

Udo Kier

  • by Judith Lewis 'deCabbit'
  • September 12th 2011
  • 1 Comment »

How to Choose a Search Engine Optimisation Agency

I keep hearing horror stories about SEO companies ripping off the very people they are meant to help. While there are some excellent search companies out there dedicated to helping customers and going above and beyond, there are others who, like cowboy builders, want to take the cash and run. This can often leave the client out of pocket but also unsure of who to turn to for help when something of this nature happens.

When I attended SES London some six or so years ago, I remember hearing the story of a charity who had paid an SEO firm five-figures and gotten nothing for it. Whether this was their perception or reality is always difficult to know but it left them thinking the whole industry was crooked. I continued to hear of agencies charging for Google Analytics (free), purporting to run PPC with no proof of any spend and continued hearing of SEO companies taking money and doing nothing at all.

If this wasn’t bad enough, the shoddy work produced by some led to sites being dropped down the rankings or worse – banned. Link buying is one example of a practice that can harm the client as well as the agency and as recently as March 2011 I have heard of companies continuing to buy links in competitive, but not extremely so, verticals. JC Penny and Overstock are just two examples of companies harmed by blatant link manipulation.

How do you know if you choosing a good agency? With no industry body and anyone able to set themselves up as an SEO, how do you know that they are acting in your best interest and in a professional way? I gave a talk on just that (and how to survive the zombie apocalypse) at the London Affiliate Conference.

How to choose an agency
View more presentations from Judith Lewis

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »