Before I read the comments on Tom’s blog (which I have summarized and compiled below) I thought about it. These are my thoughts:  

User Generated Content

I am a huge proponent of user generated content (UGC), and its impact on search results, conversions, and online transparency which contributes to the accessibility and exposure of product or service related feedback and reviews. It has also resulted in a significant contribution to site usability, information accessibility and more where it has been effectively and applicable incorporated on official company sites and blogs.

While UGC is by no means a new concept (it entered mainstream use in 2005 according to Wikipedia), it might be considered to have gained enormous traction and exposure, and thus interest over the past 12-18 months due to new studies from big name research corporations including Rubicon, Forrester, Juniper, AdAge and others (see this great list of UGC stats and their compilers). The studies revealed, reiterated and supported each other entirely in their data to the (summary) effect that:

·         Users are actively seeking input from other ‘people’ online via reviews and feedback

·         Usability in the form of ‘satisfaction’ increased with the inclusion of reviews on a site

·         Sites with reviews had higher conversion rates

·         Sites with reviews had higher ‘recall’ rates

·         More than 60% of potential purchasers research online regardless of whether they purchase on or offline and look for both positive and negative reviews

·         Negative reviews are unlikely to detract from positive reviews as long as there are positive reviews, and the negative review is deemed ‘constructive’.

·         Brands appreciate the ability to include reviews as it enhances transparency, and enables the publication of information on the site that they would normally, due to brand legal or marketing constraints, be unable to publish.

The 1to1 Media Survey of the 1to1 Xchange panel in April of this year summarized overall trend based predications on the findings of the studies very concisely in my opinion:

·         By 2020, 84% of marketers agree that building customer trust will become marketing’s primary objective, and 82% agree that collaboration with customers will prevail over marketing.

Reputation Management

The same type of scenario (not new, but ‘newly realized’) is true for the discipline of monitoring one’s, or one’s competitors, reputation online. Despite the fact that Google Alerts has been around for quite some time (2006 I think) reputation management really got a kick in the rear this year with the publication of Andy Beal’s book Radically Transparent, and the advent of TrackUR and numerous other reputation management tools.

I think the boost of interest in UGC and the need to implement it while watching for on-site spam intersected very nicely with the desire to monitor both positive and negative commentary around the web. Finding out what brand evangelists are saying can be a great way to build out a social media campaign, or any other form of online marketing initiative. Knowing who the brand evangelists are enables a company to ‘recruit’ them via empowering them with early news tid-bits, free stuff (like screen savers… no, I don’t mean a new Lamborghini – though that would be nice…), special offers for their readers and other similar free tools or offerings of gratuity and incentive. There is a fine line between empowering brand evangelists and bribing them. My heart-felt advice is;  ‘don’t cross the invisible line’.

Monitoring what is being said about you on the net and in the blogosphere also enables a business to find out what people don’t like about their company, a brand, a product line, a specific product, customer service, an affiliate, a brick and mortar store, and so on. It is a great way to be knowledgeable while at the same time proactive, assuming you develop a strategy to deal quickly, diplomatically, carefully, and positively with brand detractors. Answer them on their own site/blog or wherever they have posted the review or comment, and copy the issue raised along with your responding solution or answer onto your official site.

Not only can you answer your detractors quickly and effectively, you are also likely to gather some great insights for R&D (research and development) and I&P (insight and planning). 

In closing – my thoughts are that…

…the potential impact of effective integration and management of UGC via effective use of a well-thought strategy and a great reputation management tool  is what I think we have really come to see as a ‘significant advance’ in SMM this year.

Other comments from Tom’s readers:

Please do read his post and comment there first as I have unashamedly lifted this whole blog-post-idea-thingey from him via LinkedIn.

Tom’s readers feel that the following are the ‘significant advances in SMM during 2008’ – in no particular order:

·         Microblogging

·         Reconsidering the social dynamic

·         Adoption and consolidation

·         Mobile and iPhone use and effect

·         Leveraging online and offline more holistically

·         Personalized platforms (like Ning)

·         Mobile microblogging facilitation

·         Aggregation of multiple profiles and streamlining enabled

·         Simply the enormous boost in interest as the idea of social networking has grown, matured and solidified as ‘something to stay’ as opposed to a ‘fad’.

Have a wonderful festive season and a blessed New year if I don’t get around to stealing blogging again in the next 2 weeks J !!!

What is Consumer Generated Content?

It is content that users (or consumers) write and submit online and can be:

·         Product reviews (e.g. Amazon.com)

·         Service reviews (e.g. Google Local)

·         Seller reviews (e.g. ebay)

·         Blog comments

·         News comments

·         Forum posts or comments

·         Video/Audio and Photo sharing sites (e.g. YouTube and Flickr)

·         Social networking sites comments or posts (e.g. Twitter, SecondLife, Facebook, MySpace)

·         Wikis

·         Composite review sites (e.g. ConsumerReport.org)

Is Consumer Generated Content (CGC) Really Such A Big Deal?

The data is two-sided; and both sides of the coin – Consumers and Marketers – answer with a resounding ‘Yes!’:

1. Consumers are relying more and more on UGC:

·         According to Rubicon, ‘online comments and reviews posted by the enthusiasts are second only to word of mouth as a purchase driver for all web users. Those personal reviews are far more influential than official reviews posted by a website or magazine, or information posted online by a manufacturer.’

·         The Rubicon data also indicates that around 80% of all UGC is contributed by around 9% of the US online population. This 9% is in the majority impartial, honest and equally likely to post both negative and positive comments or opinions. In some cases, such as on Amazon, the reviews themselves are open to voting:

·         As of October 2008, almost half of US online adults read ratings and reviews at least once a month, and 19% post them. Nearly twice as many read reviews compared with 2007. (The Growth Of Social Technology Adoption, Forrester, 2008)*

·         Satisfaction for those who recalled customer reviews on the retailers’ site is 10% higher than those who said there were no reviews offered. (30 UK Online Retail Satisfaction Index, January 2008, ForeSee Results)*

·         83% of shoppers said online product evaluations and reviews had at least some level of influence on their purchasing decisions. (Opinion Research Corporation, an infoGROUP company, July 2008)*

·         74% agree—including 14% who strongly agree—that they choose companies and brands based on what others say online about their customer service experiences, the survey shows. (Society for New Communications Research, May 2008)*

·         70% of online consumers said they use the Internet to research everyday grocery products. (Prospectiv, 2008)*

·         91% of millionaires say they always or often look at reviews before buying luxury goods; 68% of ultra-affluent shoppers use consumer reviews. (Unity Marketing/Google study, reported in AdAge October 2008)*

2. Marketers are relying more and more on UGC:

·         The Shop.org State of Retailing Online study, conducted by Forrester Research, found only 26% of the 137 top retailers surveyed offered customer ratings and reviews, but 96% of them ranked customer ratings and reviews as an effective or very effective tactic at driving conversion. (Forrester)*

·         68% of online marketers believe “media is in big trouble and will lose dollars to user-generated content.” (iMedia Connection, February 2008)*

·         By 2020, 84% of marketers agree that building customer trust will become marketing’s primary objective, and 82% agree that collaboration with customers will prevail over marketing. (1to1 Media survey of the 1to1 Xchange panel, April, 2008)*

·         11% of retailers reported a 20% or more overall increase in conversions as a result of adding reviews to their sites, 21% reported an 11% to 20% increase and 5% reported a 1% to 10% increase. (eTailing Group, 2008)*

·         Consumers were willing to pay between 20 to 99% more for a 5-star rated product than for a 4-star rated product, depending on the product category. (comScore/Kelsey, October 2007)*

·         Reviews usage drives higher spending: 27% of users report an increase of 5-10%; almost 7% report an increase of 20%+. (Avenue A/Razorfish “Digital Consumer Behavior Study,” October 2007) *

·         In a study of a major electronics retailer site of 30,000 search visitors landing on user review  pages converted 60% more often, spent 50% more, and viewed 82% more pages than search visitors to other pages. (Bazaarvoice case study with major electronics retailer)*

Case Study: PETCO (2007)*:

• Shoppers who browsed the site’s “Top Rated Products” page, which features products rated most highly by customers, had a 49% higher conversion rate than the site average.
• Giving shoppers the ability to sort products within a category by customer rating led to a sales increase of 41% per unique visitor.
• After their order, PETCO asked customers, “What online tool most influenced your purchase decision?“ The Number 1 answer was product ratings and reviews, with site search coming in a distant second.
• PETCO realized a 5X increase in email click-through rates by including relevant ratings and reviews content in the campaign promotion.
• Products with reviews have a 17% lower return rate than those without reviews.

…But, the impact of UGC doesn’t stop there…

UGC Influences Offline Commerce

·         For every $1 in online sales, the Internet influenced $3.45 of store sales. (eMarketer, 2007)

·         24% of internet users reported using online reviews prior to paying for a service delivered offline. (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)

·         More than 75% of review users in nearly every category reported that the review had a significant influence on their purchase, with hotels ranking the highest (87%). (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)

·         97% of those surveyed who said they made a purchase based on an online review said they found the review to have been accurate. (comScore/The Kelsey Group, October 2007)

·         Consumers who shop online for digital cameras and TVs spend 10% more on in-store purchases than consumers who do not search online. (ChannelForce for Yahoo Search Marketing)

·         90% of those surveyed say they have a better overall shopping experience when they research products online before shopping in-store. (Harris Interactive, October 2007)

“But What About Negative UGC?”

If people are researching a product online, they are looking for what might be wrong with it. If you can be transparent on your own site about your product or service by offering reviews, then you can be sure that both positive and negative feedback (if warranted) will be included.**

1. Negative Reviews are actually of interest:

Based on the fact that folks are likely to continue searching if there is nothing negative about a product, just to make sure, especially with electronics or high-end purchases, if you don’t offer a transparent insight into your offering on your own site, by people who have actually bought from you, these researchers are very likely to go elsewhere to keep researching.**

·         “As for the product(s) with negative reviews … my experience is that negative reviews do not hurt a product as long as there are also positive reviews associated with it.”  - Don Zeidler, Director, Burpee.com**

2. Negative reviews provide helpful feedback to consumers and R&D:

·         “For example, what’s one of the best selling products so far this decade? The Apple iPod. It gets a ton of positive reviews, but one negative comment you’ll see over and over again is that the surface of the iPod scratches easily. Customers say things that the retailer and Apple can’t say: “When you buy this, get a case”. Obviously this is not stopping customers from buying the iPod, but this constructive advice is getting them to buy a case.” – Sam Decker, VP Marketing, BazaarVoice

3. Negative Reviews provide authenticity:

Why would a well known, enormously powerful and successful online retailer continue selling a product that had far more negative reviews than positive? Should they? Yes!

·         Case Study**:

·         Product: Hot Wheels Slimecano

·         Reseller: Amazon.com

·         Some Review Titles:

o        “Junk, not worth any price”         

o        “I wish I could give it zero stars”

o        “If you want your son to cry, buy this toy!”

o        “If you want your husband to cry, buy this toy!”

·         Reseller Objective:

If the retailer’s mission is to be a trusted editor of its assortment, then products with overwhelmingly negative reviews will prune the assortment quickly for the best products. But the reseller needs to continue selling the product as an ‘objective provider’ and let the market forces, or in this case, parental voices, have their impact. After a year and half, Amazon stopped selling the toy, but kept the reviews, the image and the page… Good Job!

4. Positive Reviews Outweigh Negatives:

·         62 percent of brand-related talk features products in a positive light, while less than 10% of conversations feature products negatively. (KellerFay Group)

·         60 percent of online shoppers provide feedback about shopping experiences, and they are more likely to give feedback about a positive experience than a negative one.  (Jupiter)

Conclusion

If you sell products and services, and if you have a web site, make sure you allow for reviews. If your products are great to mediocre, you should get far more positive than negative feedback, and a resultant positive impact on sales and revenue.

If you sell a crappy product – in the words of Sam Decker:

1.  Without reviews, you keep selling the product and risk costly returns and low customer satisfaction

2.  With reviews, you can use the leading indicator of negative reviews and quickly remove this product from inventory to reduce returns and improve satisfaction

3.  Or, just allow the negative reviews to steer customers to a more satisfying purchase within the category. Let the best products win, and you will win.

Therefore, make sure you enable and allow feedback, optimize your review pages, and get traction for them in the search results by supporting brand evangelists, and answering detractor issues promptly and diplomatically.

Happy UGC integration!!!

* BazaarVoice

** iMediaConnection

Please take our 4 quick surveys for SEM Pros everywhere!

SEO Success Stories

(Actually, this has a PPC Success Story after the SEO success story below. I hope you find them both enlightening and a boost if you ever have the same problems I do J.)

It can be infinitely frustrating dealing with clients who only want consultative SEO. In other words, they want a full site audit, with all the trappings, as well as a comprehensive list of recommendations based on ease of implementation and importance due to potential rankings impact….

…BUT, they (the client) choose whether or not to actually implement the changes – all or any – and sometimes you spend days doing a top-notch, detailed audit… and never see anything come of it. (Not for lack of pushing, cajoling, enticing etc… it just gets, ‘put on the backburner’, ‘delayed until budget becomes available’, ‘focusing marketing dollars elsewhere’ etc…etc)

In most cases they eventually end up implementing at least some of the changes – not ideal, but better than nothing – but every now and then you have a star client who not only implements everything, but actively seeks your consul throughout the process to double check…. THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!

Case in point; client starts implementing changes immediately, but cautiously. Client takes innocuous ‘About Us’ page for a test drive. Client utilizes recommended keywords and all recommended onpage elements, and initiates a backlink campaign for the page based on a (very comprehensive) backlink acquisition strategy guide. Four weeks after ‘optimized’ page goes live they call and ask to check the analytics.

Based on the optimization of ONE page, 4 weeks after deploy (and initiation of backlink strategy):

• Number of visitors from non-paid search engines – up 20.4%
• % of all visitors from search engines – up 24.4% to 40.73% (and counting)
• Google organic visitors – up 26%
• Yahoo! organic visitors – up 53%
• MSN organic visitors – up 240% (yes, I said 240%)
• The term for which the ‘About Us’ page was specifically optimized gained an increase of more than 2000% in visitor traffic, and was the second highest traffic driver from an organic keyword perspective (after the brand name)

The client has decided to continue, in full, with the optimization of their somewhat more important pages. I am thrilled to actually see the fruits of hard work on all parts really pay off. It highlights the potential positive effect of effective SEO, efficiently implemented by a proactive company which really wants to maximize its web site’s exposure and use as a marketing tool.

VIVA SEO!!!

PPC Success Stories

The positive impact a really good negative PPC keywords list can have on a campaign shouldn’t be underestimated…Ahh, I hear you say ‘but we already use negative keywords…’ Come sit by my cozy fireside and let me tell you a story about the wonders of a truly effective negative keyword list…

The background gumpff

Advanced semantic analysis software enabling the creation of an extensive list of negative keywords (the top 10,000 – being the maximum number currently permitted by Google) is produced and added to a PPC campaign. The most pertinent negative keywords are identified by the software and ranked in importance of 1 through, 10,000 yielding both quality and quantity data. A long-tail filtration effect is enabled, maximizing the potential for broad and phrase match PPC efficiency, typically saving 20 – 40% on PPC ad spend.

In other words, by maximizing the application of 10,000 negative keywords within a Google PPC campaign, the benefits of negative match keywords (improved targeting and reduced wasted ad spend, all while not eliminating the long tail via exact match) are also maximized.

In a nutshell, impressions are down; CTR is down; cost per conversion is down (20-40%), profit is up; ROI is up; conversions remain constant. It’s a PPC win-win situation.

I am so super impressed by this. It appears as though the industry is as well… So far we have given three presentations this year since July on our semantically enabled negative keyword software at HostingCon, Marketing Profs and SMX New York. I realize this sounds like a sell. It’s not meant to be. My objective is to get you to seriously consider and evaluate your negative keyword list, and if you want to know more about how Epiar does it just comment here, or email me. My email is in the footer of this post.

VIVA PPC!!!

To end…. and to quote the infamous Hannibal (I’m aging myself with A-team references *sigh*)…

“I love it when a plan comes together!” J

Thanks for reading!

laura[at]epiar[dot]com

I therefore find Google’s new release (last Wednesday) interesting to say the least.

A Bit About Display Ad Builder

Google has now integrated a do-it-yourself display (banner) ad creation tool for all AdWords users (i.e. you must have an account).

1. You can target your audience via:

• contextual (ads displayed on contextually/keyword relevance basis on sites that are part of Google’s content network); or
• placement targeting (choosing specific websites on which you want your shiny new display ad to appear; again these sites must be part of Google’s content network).

2. Then you choose your design template and customize it. There are fully customizable direct response and interactive ad templates; and there are pre-designed by industry templates – currently entertainment, financial, retail, travel. (If you log in to your Google Adwords account and click on a campaign, you will get a little ‘invitation’ asking you to try it out – there you will see a whole bunch more information on available templates – here is one screen grab)

3. You then set your daily budget and your CPC and off you go.

4. They have also included another little acronym for us all to get used to – introducing the PPR (Placement Performance Report).

Despite banner blindness, I would be very interested to see the results between the CTR and conversion rates on a specifically selected set of sites on the content network for a traditional text PPC ad and a ‘DIY’ display ad. Traditionally display ads are far less targeted in distribution than PPC ads, Google has made that annoying state of affairs disappear ‘poof’.

Admittedly the designs are by no means all stunning creatives, but they are display ads, and some are interactive, and some are dynamic – and they are free to create. I really like the idea; I think it is a great opportunity for small businesses to really test the waters far more effectively by trying both display and text ads via both contextual and placement targeting to determine what really works for them, without the prohibitive cost of creating display ads, requiring ad houses to produce reports no-one can understand, and with the ability to a/b test creatives themselves. It opens up a whole new area of online advertising streamlining and tactical refinement, and is very well times with the economic downturn.

(I wonder though if these DIY ads will count as search marketing or display advertising for adspend determination purposes?)

Anyhoo…  what I do think is that it would have been a bigger feather in Google’s hat if they had come out with the idea first, not apparently  rushed into it on MySpace’s heels. And, not to be outdone by any manner of means… Meet My Ads by Yahoo! AND Yahoo! now allows you to target your ads to a ZIP code level… That’s right – beats the socks off Google.

I think it’s great that these big online companies are being so proactive. I think it bodes well for our industry, and for the small business advertiser who can very easily manage his ad spend. And I think it bodes well for their investors.

I got a call a few weeks ago from an exceptionally talented woman I used to work with at a pretty big agency. She is a super hot account manager, and she had been getting some queries from clients through her team indicating interest in SEM services. She called me.

The gist of the call was that she wanted to know if I might give her team an insight into SEM; pros, cons, opportunities, challenges and market insights. The team, being mostly traditional media execs and hard web devs (all very good I might add) were not enthused by the idea of a lunch and learn with an ‘SEO person’, and she was not going to get funding for it. Ergo I agreed to go in for a lunch and learn over my lunch hour and give them a run down, gratis.

Initially (after the most inspiring parking experience I can remember courtesy of God) I was worried that no one was going to show, but over the 45 minutes I chatted and went over a prepared ppt and answered questions, the room filled up. Apparently they had thought I was going to bore them to death with ‘keyword research’. I don’t think I actually mentioned keyword research more than once.

It was very insightful from my point of view. Initial blasé and almost humorous interest ended up with enlightening Q&A as we continued through my ppt, with more and more direct and targeted interest from the web devs as we progressed. Unfortunately I think I pitched it a bit ‘low’ level for some of the account execs, but some of them were really interested and both happily surprised and encouraged by what they already knew, and what they could understand.

I walked away with a new set of contacts, a new set of web developers in a really great Calgary digital house with awesome talent who requested if they could tap me with more questions. They have my email, and they are not the type of company or people to take advantage. I’m cool with that.

I realize that from a financial point of view doing something for free is bad business. However, I strongly believe in both loss-leaders and in the power of effective SEM; both SEO and PPC. I also believe in giving a little for a practice I believe will benefit businesses.

My final take-away is this; this company has

• clients that need SEM
• the in-house talent to create incredibly attractive and functional websites and other marketing collateral as well as marketing proposals
• the ability to manage, produce and deliver on client briefs…

They now also have the ability to:

• speak to SEM queries and pitch accordingly
• answer basic SEO and PPC questions
• understand basic bad vs. good SEO practice, and 
• they totally get the need for great analytics to allow for efficient benchmarking, reporting and client profitability and ROI proof

They also:

• understand the possibilities and challenges associated with SEO and effective PPC
• have a contact to bounce ideas off ..of (? – terrible grammar)
• have someone they can call to find a contractor for SEO,PPC or SEM services

They are excited.

I am thrilled to have been able to spend 45 minutes with a progressive company to enable them to effectively begin to explain SEM to their rather substantial client base.

If I personally get anything financial out of it in the long run – great. If I don’t, I already have the enormous feeling of gratification of being able to educate out some basic SEO and PPC principles to a progressive, attentive and open audience who took it to heart and participated in learning. I hope to get a full series going… it would be huge fun for me as well as something I would just love to do, a knock on from my days as an economics lecturer. I miss those days.

I think if I could spend my time educating companies on SEM, I would be a very happy bunny. It was an enormously positive experience for me… Of-course, I would like to start actually making some money for it at some point … just sayin’… I’m a nice person and all, but I have three little kids and a mortgage, you know how it goes – altruism starts with a feeling and ends with a need J.

God bless you everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians!

• Yes, branding is important.
• Yes, your users are more important, and the usability and logical structure of your site is vital.
• Yes, you may have legal issues to consider.
• No, those do not pose a problem as you begin to develop you IA – though they might in the refinement stages.

First, let’s settle on a business type… say our ‘client’ is an online gift shop (www.UniqueGifts4YouOnline.com – not taken as of posting according to GoDaddy)

Starting with Wordtracker, let’s see what we get – I’m not pulling all the data for this illustration for somewhat obvious reasons J:

Now, in practice we would conduct a whole lot more research for the first phase, and we would run the search through one or two other keyword research tools to check data and see what we missed. Let’s assume we did, and it stayed the same (never gonna happen… but for the purposes of this post)…

(Some) Insights so far:

1. People are searching for graduation gifts nearly 70% more often than any other type of gift. Perhaps targeting ‘graduation’ terms in PPC with carefully worded adcopy due to likely impressions would be prudent. Also, assuming the client sells ‘graduation’ gifts, maybe an initiative to include a digital transferable voucher for graduation gifts to all online purchasers might be worth considering.
2. ‘Unique’ and ‘last minute’ seem to be cropping up a few times
3. There is a mix of searches on the singular and plural versions of the word ‘gift’. Is the client brand consciously concerned to the extent that they will want to maintain a uniform (i.e. all singular or all plural terms) approach to content presentation in the navigation and throughout the site? Find out now. We’ll assume not for the purpose of this illustration.
4. ‘Gift registry’ is searched for a lot. If the client doesn’t offer a gift registry service, perhaps they should investigate it.

Phase 2: Begin to form your IA outline. For example (I color coded the folder depths);

1*Home (Gift Store)

1*Gifts

Ø Graduation Gifts

Ø Holiday Gifts

Ø Gift Cards

·         Visa Gift Cards

·         Starbucks Gift Card

·         American Express Gift Cards

Ø Unique Gifts

·         Unique Baby Gifts

·         Unique Gift Children

·         Unique Gift Idea

Ø Birthday Gift

Ø Anniversary Gifts

Ø Personalized Gifts

Ø Business Gift

Ø Baby Shower Gift

·         Gifts for dad’s to be

1*Gift ideas

Ø Newborn Gift Idea

Ø Graduation Gift Ideas

Ø Last Minute Gift Ideas

1*Gift Registry

Phase 3: Refine and maximize usability based on SEO considerations

• I reckon that it looks a mess – so let’s alphabetize it.
• I also think that there is a whole lot of duplicate page possibilities, so we’ll cross link, and
• There is significant opportunity for internal linking, so we’ll indicate to copy where they should be linking to another page within the body copy. We’ll also delve a little deeper into the primary phrases; I’ll choose ‘anniversary gifts’ and ‘personalized gifts’.

1*Home (Gift Store)

1*Gifts

Ø Anniversary Gifts [link to anniversary gift ideas]

·         50^th Anniversary Gifts

·         Traditional Anniversary Gifts

·         Wedding Anniversary Gifts [link to 50^th anniversary gifts]

Ø Baby Shower Gift

·         Gifts for dad’s to be

Ø Birthday Gift

Ø Business Gift

Ø Gift Cards

·         Visa Gift Cards

·         Starbucks Gift Card

·         American Express Gift Cards

Ø Graduation Gifts

·         Personalized Graduation Gifts

Ø Holiday Gifts

Ø Personalized Gifts

·         Homemade gift ideas for boyfriend

·         Personalized Baby Gift (cross link to same page listed under ‘Unique Baby Gifts’)

·         Personalized Graduation Gifts (cross link to same page listed under ‘Graduation Gifts’)

Ø Unique Gifts

·         Unique Anniversary Gifts (cross link Anniversary Gifts)

·         Unique Baby Gifts

§ Personalized Baby Gift (cross link)

·         Unique Gift Children

·         Unique Gift Idea

1*Gift ideas

Ø Anniversary Gift Ideas [link to Anniversary Gifts]

        ·        Homemade Anniversary Gift Ideas

Ø Graduation Gift Ideas [link to Graduation Gifts]

Ø Last Minute Gift Ideas

        ·       Gift Cards (cross link)

       ·        Homemade Anniversary Gift IdeasLast Minute Valentine Gifts [Link to both ‘Anniversary Gift’ and ‘Anniversary Gift Ideas’ pages]

Ø Newborn Gift Idea

        ·        Unique baby gifts (cross link)

1*Gift Registry

(Some) More Insights:

While ‘homemade gifts’ has a relatively low search volume at only 73 (WT searches) there are a lot of folks looking for homemade gifts for graduation, boyfriends and more. Options include expanding offering to include arts and crafts and idea books and materials, and maybe a separate primary navigation button to ‘Homemade Gifts’ – depends on clients brand and willingness to expand product offering.

I also don’t like the term ‘unique gift children’ [1,558 WT]. Nearest term is not much better and with a count of [2 WT]. This is where, if you haven’t (which is bad, very bad), you would check against another keyword research tool. If the keyword research tools simply don’t make a usable term, change it with a stop word if possible. If not, tell the client your recommendations. I think that ‘for‘ might be a stop word; therefore I might offer the alternative of ‘unique gift for children’. I realise that is not grammatically correct, but the search volume on the term is enormous (as is the competition). This is a classic case of ‘will the user get it’? ‘be offended by it’? ‘misinterpret it’? And ‘can the brand handle it? I’m going to leave it as stands for this post.

Phase 4*: Check out the competition and other related sites and add other primary links

(*Assuming we have covered all bases, have conducted full keyword research, and cross linked and ‘internally linked’ for copy wherever possible)

Check out how many pages/sites are competing for the terms you are planning on targeting. If you are in this (gift) industry, you have some work to do with backlinking and establishing yourself via SMM and presence if you’re new… (maybe even if you’re old but haven’t harnessed the backlink capacity of the industry yet). Linking is not a one time thing. NOR is it the point of this post…

Maybe the client should consider photo albums? Linking up with Party Services? Selling invitations?

Perhaps presenting the gift categories as presented above by ‘Feeling’ (and with additional keyword research); as in:

• Cheer Up Gifts
• Get Better Soon Gifts
• I Love You Gift
• Thank You Gift

…

Or maybe by ‘Type’ (again with more Keyword research); as in:

• Christian Gifts
• Funny Gifts
• Geeky Gifts
• Trendy Gifts
• Whacky Gifts

Perhaps an internal search facility is warranted?

Don’t forget the usuals. For example:

• About Us
• FAQ
• Shipping & Handling
• Returns Policy
• Contact Us
• Terms & Conditions
• Privacy Policy
• Blog (with RSS)
• Sitemap
• Etc…

Phase 5: Optimize Your Home Page

I realize that it may seem odd focusing on your home page last, it’s not really. Your home page will be optimized for your brand and your highest level keyphrases. Wait until you have your IA worked out, and then go back.

Two phrases picked out so far for the Home page are:

‘Gifts’ is waaay to generic. ‘Gift Store’ is a little more on target.

Optimize for these two as well as including the term ‘unique’ (based on a quick review of only WT here):

So present the home page with initial suggested ‘Optimization Title Element’ when you present the IA. For example:

Home Page Title: Gifts Online from Your Unique Gift Store | UniqueGifts4YouOnline

And finally…

Expect back and forth with the client as they work through the final IA. As long as you have done due diligence, and you stand your ground and influence and educate like crazy, you’ve done your job. For example; why optimize for both ‘Graduation Gifts’ and ‘Graduation Gift Ideas’?:

• Search query intent and search query language are usually relatively closely associated when it comes to people who are internet savvy; not so much with those who are not.
• ‘Idea’ copy can be significantly different to ‘gift copy’ if you have a half decent copy writer.
• Interlinking is not a crime.

Whatever you do, don’t start page level optimizations until you have their have their sign-off approval in your hot-sticky (and somewhat geeky) hands J. Then provide a list of related terms on a page by page basis for copy writers before you optimize as they need to be working on the copy as you finish the html elements. Work with them as closely as possible and be open to contact (all this assuming you are not a pro copy writer and thus ‘Person-Super-SEO’ who is an expert SEO, crap-hot copywriter and guru-coder deluxe).

And that, dear readers, is how keyword research can – and should in my perfect SEO world J – provide you with a darned hot website architecture foundation.

Heck, if SEO is such a waste of time, perhaps the purveyors of these gems of wisdom should stand by their convictions and do exactly what SEO advises against to prove their point.

Without further ado, this is my advice for all those who really and truly feel that SEO advice and best practice is a waste of their precious time and money…

1. Don’t conduct any keyword or online competitive research. Pfft, I mean you know your site and your product so of course you know exactly what people are looking for when searching for your online offering – so you should definitely focus on the phrase ‘preowned automobiles’ if you’re a used truck salesman in a farm community of the Midwest – it’s all about the brand

2. Ensure that you utilize a noindex, noarchive and nofollow tag in your <header>

3. Use the same title tag for every page, or just leave it out – no biggie

4. Make sure you include every possible variation of your keyword at least twice in the meta description and meta keywords tags; better yet don’t use the meta description and double up on the keywords in the meta keyword tag to be safe

5. Don’t make use of Alt attributes. In fact, stop wasting time and just robots.txt out your image folder, much more efficient use of web dev time

6. Don’t bother with <H> tags – users can see the headline just fine

7. Make sure your navigation is in JavaScript - or Flash at the very least - and apply a nofollow tag (just for the heck of it) to every navigation link, but not outbound links – that’s just silly

8. Keep your pages as clean as possible by using as little text as possible so as not to confuse your users

9. Be clever and include at least 15 lines of repetitive keywords in the same color text as your background to make sure your pages are topically relevant to the search engines, assuming you care about search engine traffic in the first place … no, no, not SEO.. Search. Traffic. – Pay attention…jeez

10. If you simply must include content, make sure you scrape it or use auto generated content – much more efficient really, oh – and definitely use iFrames

11. It’s fine to make sure people find pages on your site by including them a few times each

12. If you are in the US but your major market is Canada, make sure you buy a .com and host in the States, and never pay any attention to the quality of your server… everyone goes down once in a while

13. Make use of dynamic URLs with special characters and session ids, don’t bother with mod-rewrites – another colossal waste of time

14. Change URL naming protocols frequently and definitely apply .302 redirects, or just leave it and let it all come naturally

15. Don’t bother with a custom 404 – Google has a handy 404 error page you can use for free

16. Be clever and fool the engines by using doorway pages

17. Definitely don’t worry about choosing a canonical version, the users see the same version of the page you’ve designed for them anyway

18. Don’t worry about trying to get backlinks, they’re totally over-rated. If you must (some idiot says it’s important – the SEO Manager no-doubt), then commenting on every blog you know – every page on every blog is much better – will get you lots of links fast. Or use a backlink bot (referrer spamming) - even better

19. You should, however, ensure that you link out to as many sites as possible – doesn’t really matter if they’re related to your business – and if they happen to link to hundreds of other unrelated gambling and porn sites, well that’s super – bigger network for you

20. Don’t worry about including an html sitemap, also totally over-rated

21. Definitely make use of proxy spamming – heck spam away

22. Don’t bother with web analytics, another dire waste of time

23. Definitely sell links – great income sideline

24. Thinking ‘my site is built therefore they will come’ is bang-on

I’m completely happy to stake my little SEO buttocks on the line when I say with utter certainty that employing these tactics will ensure the disappearance of a site from the SERPs PDQ. And if our dear SEO haters don’t know what SERPs is, it’s probably just as well. Then again, my advice as an SEO is a waste of time, so perhaps they should just go ahead and knock themselves out… literally, and in more ways than one.

Note; The fact that I am not at SES San Jose has in no-way made me feel bitter, twisted or generally irritable.

Nonetheless, please feel free to follow my usually sunny-side up pro-SEO views on Twitter…

…

Note 2; Do you think pro-SEO will become one of the rallying cries of the next election? *sigh* Well, I have my virtual sandbox soapbox in the meanwhile…

…

Note 3; [to the SEO haters] My buttocks may not be that small, but they’re better than your SEO…

………

AND back to the sandbox for me

(Un)Related Post

• SEO – A Rose by Any Other Name

It’s not a case of the chicken-before-the-egg or vice versa. They are two completely different disciplines, though each can benefit from the other much as SEO and paid search can benefit from other online and offline advertising.

Let’s look at each of these terms in isolation:

SMM:

abbreviation for:

social media marketing

definition a’la SEMI:

An internet marketing practice involving the participation of a company/brand/identity on social media* sites to pursue marketing & brand objectives online via social bookmarking*, media* and professional networking sites.

*Bookmarking sites traditionally allow you to bookmark and share sites, while social media sites offer bookmarking capabilities along with advanced voting ‘rights’ to ‘thumbs-up’ or ‘thumbs-down’ a post.

achieved via:

1. Finding relevant social sites around your online offering. For example;

·    Sphinn is pretty much utilized and targeted by search marketing bloggers and professionals involved in SEM;

·    Care2 is for businesses making a serious attempt to ‘go green’;

·    NetParty for younger SMM practitioners to connect online & organize real meets to network in the flesh;

·    Autospies focuses on everything auto related;

·    NowPublic focuses on citizen journalism;

·    Twitter is a ‘mini-blog’ site allowing users to post short messages on new products, posts & ideas.

2. Determine if the sites you see as ‘relevant’ actually have a following of people that will make engagement worth your while.

It’s easy to get fixated on the ‘popularity’ element of these sites, but if you don’t find and interact with your target market, it’s ultimately a waste of time.

·    Look for brand evangelists or competitor evangelists on the sites. Read what they have to say. Follow the commentary for a while. Determine if you can get mileage out of being involved, or if it is too contentious, too combative, too irrelevant, too targeted, too whatever. You need to plan your SMM strategy with clear objectives, just as with any other media. Just because it’s free to join, does not mean that your time is free. And building and maintaining your presence on the social sites does take time. A lot of it.

3. Create a realistic, robust, ‘cool’ profile and engage the community

·    Develop your social persona as a brand evangelist with a personality

·    Keep the same handle on all sites for recognition

·    Use your logo as your avatar, or your picture – how ‘big’ or ‘recognised’ are you at the start? You can always change your avatar. Start with easy identification one-way or the other. Be as ‘personable’ as you can if you are a new entrant with little to no social brand recognition.

·    Be fair

·    Never be judgmental or rude

·    Never ignore negative commentary

·    Always acknowledge positive feedback

·    Deal with detractors as soon as possible either via your persona, or by directing them to an ‘answering’ official blog post on the brand site as soon as negative comments arise

·    Empower your brand evangelists by giving them new story heads-up early, by giving them acknowledgement on your official site, and by following their social media profiles and commenting as warranted

·    Consider promoting test market products not only through geographic areas, but also through your social media network. If you’ve built your persona up right, they’ll be fair and impartial in an effort to assist you in your R&D

·    Offer contests & competitions around your brand embracing online media – the best humorous amateur video promoting a specific product or service gets a free ‘whatever’ and a month’s free publicity when you include it in your newsletter and on your News page; a bit like ‘iReport’ on HNN

·    Drive media to your social profiles via other online and offline media

·    Use your social profiles to link to your feed, blog, site, microsites, videos, mobile sites etc

·    Offer (limited) printable, redeemable-on-site ‘coupons’ to community members

·    Keep engaging to build your reputation, your recognition, and your authority

SEM

abbreviation for:

search engine marketing

definition a’la SEMI:

SEM involves the use of search engine optimization (SEO), paid search, and web analytics.

·    The objective of SEO is to rank a site in the organic listings for a sample (defined population) of the universe of relevant terms;

·    the objective of paid search is to list the site in the sponsored results across the engines for the universe of performing terms;

·    the objective of web analytics is to monitor the efficacy in terms of return on investment, profit and exposure for either or both of these practices.

SEO and Paid Search complement each other to a significant extent. Neither is cheap, and neither is easy. It’s not a case of rocket science, it’s a case of experience in an increasingly competitive and combative environment as web site numbers climb into the multi-billion numbers, and paid search advertisers reach into their comparative stratosphere.

achieved via:

·    effective keyword research

·    integration of SEO with IA, copy, web design, development, and analytics

·    relevant, aggressive targeted and relevant backlinking campaigns for SEO (where SMM plays part of it’s related and enormously important role)

·    tactical refinement of both SEO and paid search (more immediately) via web analytics data from all sites including referral sites, some based on SMM personas

·    web analytics reporting on conversions, profit and exposure via both impressions (on placement), CTR and messaging of paid search ads

·    integrated analytics reporting where provided for to monitor effect of other online campaigns and offline campaigns on paid and SEO listed pages

·    overall increase in exposure and recognition of brand online in the search engines including listings and exposure due to SMM efforts

Conclusions 1 & 2:

1. The only time SMM can be seen to be boosting SEM strategy without dedicated spend on a paid search campaign to persona pages which may, or may not (in most cases), be worth your investment is when SMM profile pages, blog posts or reviews start moving into viably ‘visible’ pages of the engines (from a CTR pov), and begin to generate traffic of their own. This is when SEM would step in, as warranted, to boost that exposure, assuming it was worth the additional investment.

2. The only time SEM can be seen to boost SMM is when the SEO or paid search efforts are actively targeting prfiles.

My by-line for these two disciplines is this:

‘united-but-unique; related but mutually exclusive’.

My disclaimer is this:

This is for folks new to SMM. If you are a fundi and find fault, please say so in the comments, but please link to a relevant respond page on your site to substantiate your answer for the newbies. Thanks – (it’s all about the readers – and if you’re new – Welcome! – L)

This post will try to demystify the issue.

Why Spying on the Online Competition Can Benefit SEM (SEO & PPC) Efforts

Competitive intelligence can tell what phrases your competition is effectively ranking on, and what they aren’t, providing you with additional guidance as you plan your organic and paid search strategies.

How to Spy on the Online Competition

SEO – First;

·    Check out your top online competitors.

·    Check their title tags, META data, headers and primary targeted terms. Make a list of terms for which they appear to be optimizing.

·    Run the terms they are ‘optimized’ for through Google and see if they rank in the top 10 (or 30). Make a note of the terms they actually rank for.

·    Then run their URL through SEODigger.com. For example; if you are a Sushi restaurant in Chicago, SushiWabi.com is a direct online competitor.  SEODigger.com will show you (depending on data centers and other impacting factors, but it’s not a bad guide) what positions this site holds in Google, and for what terms.

·    Then run their URL through SpyFu.com. If you are a subscriber, their results are more comprehensive. The free tool is not a bad quick check on SEODigger for organic results, but is more useful for seeing their Paid Search terms. Which we look at in the Paid search step below.

·    Run the list of ranking terms through Wordtracker, Google Keywords, KeyWord Discovery, Suggest tools on the various search engines.

·    Make a list of the top 20-50 terms on each keyword research resource you use (use at least 2 or 3 to take into account variations and discrepancies).

·    Make this list for each primary term you are investigating, noting which competitor is advertising for which primary term, and what the search volume and competition for each term is. Apply information in Third step below…

SEO – Second;

·    Check out your top offline competitors, especially if your business is offline based or has a strong offline market. If your offline competitors are the same as your online competitors it makes life a smidge easier, but it is not always the case.

·    For example: In the town of Calgary in Alberta, a search on plumbers yields a results listing ‘grouped’ plumbers with a list of ‘top plumbers’

·    BUT If I look in the YellowPages (offline) I get:

o        Knight Plumbing

o        Roto-Rooters

o        Action Auger

o        Abacus

·    none of the plumbers mentioned in my online list from my first selection are mentioned. Incidentally the iYP search yields nearly the same results. This is indicating that the top offline listings with their big YP ads are hitting the iYP advertising as well… Anyone ever tell them about SEO? I reckon iYP is keeping it close. They can’t really take to SEO can they… way too much conflict of interest.

·    Take these top offline competitors and run them through Google looking to see if they have websites, and if they have, what they are optimized for. If you are not optimized, you may see some strong relationships between their site and yours in terms of what is being missed. It’s a nice way to view a poorly optimized site and figure out why they are not working when compared to competitors that are – almost a DIY audit on the competition. You can request that your SEO Consultant do that for you as extra data for future development.

SEO – Third;

Take all the terms you have seen, even if they are not ranking a site but are relevant to your business. Pass them to your IA team, and get a decent site plan drawn up utilizing the primary keywords. Check, refine, review and then continue as per best practice SEO redevelopment. (I reccommend reading the post on Keyword Research, and Search Query vs Search Intent as well)

Paid Search

·    Take the data gleaned from SEODigger.

·    Look at the PPC data from SpyFu.com. For a better example I’ll look at a restaurant that is advertising via PPC (I can only see those advertising across North America and including Canada in their geo-target). Let’s look at OliveGarden.com.

o     This site has a lot more traffic, and the image shows organic data on competitors as well as search terms. Paid subscription yields more data, but for this exercise this is sufficient.

o     PPC data from the Olive Garden tells us whose advertising on prime terms *click a term in the ‘advertisements’* section as above and you’ll see the top list of 10 PPC competitors ranking for the phrase you clicked in Google. Again, subscription gives much more info. The list you chose from is the list of PPC terms people are using to rank for your business. You can check that data for any URL, assuming they are advertisinig via PPC on Google. From image above, you can see that OliveGarden appears to be targeting the term ‘chilis gift card’

·    SpyFu is super easy to use, and free as you figure it out. I highly recommend it.

·    Take all the keywords you have, from organic research as per steps 1&2.

·    Take the terms you have gathered in excess left over from your IA and copy team for SEO site plan.

·    Take the terms you found from PPC competitive insights and run them through the keyword research tools to get variations.

·    Make a final trim and split the keywords into a usable, adgroup and keyword targeted PPC campaign.

Note on brands targeting other brands… Some brands have ‘gentleman deals’ not to target other competitor brand names in the PPC results to keep PPC costs down. If they work, it is of enormous benefit to all brands concerned.

In most cases this is not the case. HOWEVER, my advice is to type your brand and variations of it into Google and see who’s advertising in the paid results via SpyFu (or more advanced AdGooroo – there are a huge number of software solutions out there, I personally know these two and recommend them both).

Contact them and request a mutual cease and desist on brand name terms. If they are amenable, get a document from both/all parties listing the brand name terms they want kept ‘free’. Review all terms individually and then collectively and form a ‘brand exclusive’ partnership. As soon as you can get something off the ground, the collective is likely to have the combined power to absorb new *brand stealers*, or negate their opportunity to capitalize on your grouped name terms.

Reputation Management Spying

·    If you know what initiatives your online competition is engaging in, or what issues are befalling them you can combat them immediately via PPC initiatives, and long term via SEO.

·    For example; if a competitors is having financial issues, or board in-fighting, if they are closing stores or opening new ones, you can be among the first to know via reputation monitoring and management.

·    You can use the information to create targeted PPC campaigns, and create long term competitive, combative, or superior pages. You can use the information to create a new niche, extend a niche, or as an idea for your own product or service development. The possibilities are virtually limitless.

·    A great free tool is Google Alerts. Easy to set up, and easy to monitor. Whatever ‘term’ or ‘brand’ you enter will be monitored and emailed to you if you choose it to be an ‘alert’ any time that ‘term’ is included in a Google news, web, blog or other result.

·    Two superb paid for tools include TruCast  (a social media and blog monitoring solution from VisibleTechnologies) and TrakUr (Google Alert on steroids according to it’s creators).

Conclusion:

Monitor your competition online and off. See what they are doing and strategize reactively, and proactively depending on what you find!

At the risk of putting myself in the firing line, I’m going to try to put my point across in defense of rankings reports. I’m blogging it here as it will take somewhat more than my 140 character tweet allowance…. Before you nail me in the comments, please read the full post J

Ranking Reports

These are reports provided by software programs like WebCEO which send automatic queries to Google and the other search engines to determine rankings on a range of keywords or phrases. They show increases or decreases in rankings of selected phrases, as well as total number of selected keywords ranking from a submitted universe.

My defense of ranking reports – a rebuttal of anti-ranking-report arguments over the past few days

Ranking reports are an easy sell. SMB clients (in general) have no understanding of log-files or analytics, let alone what a SERP is. They do however want to know that there will be reporting they can understand regarding the efficacy of the SEO efforts they are paying for.

Hang-on… Read me out

1. I am not saying that ranking reports are what you should focus your actual reporting on
2. I am not saying that ranking reports are always accurate, though in my experience they are not that far off despite different data centers
3. I am saying that it is counter-productive to baffle clients new to SEO with a long-winded attempt at education on the wonders of log-files, keyword analytics, keyword to conversion rates, relative estimated SERP position CTR rates, eye tracking heat maps, affect of images and news results in the blended search results on CTR and so on and so forth. I am going to expand on this point below…

New to SEO? Can I confound you and take your money please?

I know that’s an exaggeration, but SEO’s who live and breathe the subject tend to forget that there is a whole world out there who does not know what a META description is, why keyword research is important, or who Danny Sullivan is.

In many cases, though not all, the longer you have been in the industry, the less tolerant you are with practices you know to be old-hat, incomplete, or inaccurate in any way. That’s a good thing. But it’s important not to forget about the great multitudes of potential clients with sites who really have no clue.

No, they are not stupid. No, they are not ‘uniformed’. No, they are not gullible. But they are, in many cases uneducated, and they need their fears to be assuaged. The whole SEO, SEM, SMM, internet band-wagon in general seems to be a massive juggernaut out of control. They want to understand that they will have something tangible to show for ‘it’ that they understand even though at this stage they don’t really ‘get it’. It’s their hard-earned dollars designated for marketing for which they fight to get approval… Their spend options are pretty big.

They may have heard of search engine optimization. What they probably have heard is that people who ‘do’ SEO can make them rank number 1 in Google for their brand name and lots of other ‘important words’. What they have not been told is that ranking on ‘fake Nike trainers’ if you sell real Nike trainers is not a good idea, and they probably haven’t thought that far yet as the whole concept of ranking in the search engines without paying for it per-click (if they have even heard of that) is new to them.

How to deal with this and where ranking reports raise their ugly/helpful heads depending on your point of view:

1. It is important to set expectations. This does not take a half hour lesson in SEO basics. Assuming the SEO has checked out the site, knows there is no redesign budget, and hasn’t found anything totally dire with the coding, and assuming there are no analytics, it’s relatively easy to simply give the client an elevator speech that will not confound them entirely in the early stages; something along the lines of:

“In order to figure out how best to position your site in the search engines, we need to determine what keywords we want to optimize your site for. To do this we need to conduct online keyword research to determine what your target market is actually searching for online.

We do this by utilizing a number of specifically developed keyword research tools that provide us with the keyword use of your target market when they are looking online for the service you provide. These keywords are the actual keyword terms or phrases that people like you or I would type into the search box on the search engines when we are researching or looking for a product or service online (show them an example on your laptop).

We then figure out which keywords are going to provide your site with the greatest effective exposure in terms of potential ROI when we target them by applying SEO best practice. The Recommendations Document we provide will explain everything in detail, and we’ll follow up with consultation time to explain terms and concepts that are new to you prior to integrating the recommendations, based ofcourse on your approval.

We cannot guarantee or promise you the number one position in Google or any major search engine for any term or terms, though there is a very strong likelihood that your brand name will rank very well. What we can begin to show you once the optimization recommendations are implemented is how your rankings on key identified and selected terms for optimization are improving by utilizing what is called ‘ranking software’.

This software will show you how your rankings on the key terms identified for the purpose of increasing your exposure in the engines have improved once the SEO process has begun. These rankings may take from a few days to weeks to months to show any significant improvements due to a number of factors. This will also be explained in full in the recommendations.

The recommendations document will also contain information on a vital element of SEO called ‘web analytics’. This section will explain what your real key performance indicators (KPI) should be, how we measure them, and how we will report those to you.

We also need to make very clear at this juncture that if all of our recommendations are not implemented, either by ourselves, or by your in-house team in close consultation with your provided lead SEO consultant, that any results will be negatively affected, and possibly entirely disaffected.

Note to SEO experts reading this post. Yes, I know there is a lot more to SEO. You know that too. The average SMB contact is probably already crossing their eyes. This is all new to many of them. But they probably need to be convinced of some kind of immediate ‘reporting’ structure that they can understand and feed on to other members of their team or corporate board. Ranking reports provide that initial toe-hold for them to get excited, involved, interested in learning more, and most vitally, which will convince them to proceed with the initiative.

2. Follow up this conversation will a full Recommendations Document, explaining everything; from definitions to visual examples of what a title tag is (for example) how the title tag is viewed in the SERPs, where it is seen in the browser, and so on and so forth. SnagIt is great for these grabs. Make this document usable  on a page-by-page basis showing what ‘is’ and what ‘should be’; e.g. current title vs. recommended; current META  description vs. recommended; etc, and if you do SEO copywriting, which I personally think is important, then show them old vs. recommended utilizing highlights to show difference and changes. Reassure them that their brand message is not being lost, and explain why each element you are recommending is included.

Attach a full keyword research document based on all keywords gathered in alphabetical order including search volume, KEI (with definition and explanation), and competing sites. I know KEI is not the be-all and end-all, but it does give guidance and support to your argument on review that perhaps trying to rank on ‘used cars’ will be a lot harder for them to realistically achieve when compared to ranking on ‘used dodge caravans orlando’. Don’t ‘prune’ the keyword document too much apart from totally irrelevant terms; e.g. a cancer foundation will not be interested in words around ‘cancer horoscope’ or ‘tropic of cancer’.

Through your client’s eyes…

At this stage the search engines are your new-to-seo-client’s ‘oyster’. None of their competitors, friends or business acquaintances has heard of it or implemented it, so they must really be ahead of the curve! This is the time to gently explain that SEO has been around for over a decade, and is a highly competitive and sometimes combative practice. Show them some examples without terrifying them and losing their will to continue. Support your initial statement that we can ‘improve your exposure, but not guarantee your rankings’. Assuming you’re white-hat. I probably should have started this post by saying ‘black-hats-ignore’ .

3. Run an initial benchmark (horrors!) ranking report along with ensuring that the chosen analytics program snippets are coded in.

Apply the recommended SEO changes to the site, start the backlink campaign, and run monthly ranking reports to support and supplement your real KPI analytics reporting.

As soon as your client ‘gets’ your real analytics reports with KPI data based on conversions, returns, interaction, registrations, whatever, you can wean them off the rankings reports in favor of the more detailed, accurate and insightful web-analytics.

In Closing

Ranking Reports are not perfect, not infallible, and not what you should by any means focus on in terms of reporting standards for your clients, but they do have their place. I think it would be a sad day for the industry if the possibility of utilizing them became defunct.

(Final comment; a friend ran a report for a client using WebCeo on the 7^th after speaking with the team at WebCEO, and it worked fine.)