1. How do I make sure UGC is optimized and ranks well?
2. Are there strategies I can use to get the most out of my UGC from an SEO point of view?

The simple answer is that the optimal solution will likely be different for each business and/or site, but in general you should begin by controlling the pages on which the UGC will display, as well as the primary pages within your remit that link directly to them. And remember, your target market may be more tech savvy than you think and ready and willing to start engaging more actively, especially if you have a large loyal return base.

(this is BIG because this is both a really big pain point and a really big stumbling block; funny yet just a smidge tragic if you like)

A common example that comes to mind when thinking about a business and the ways users provide feedback about an online offering are ‘Customer Reviews’. These reviews are enormously important in that they have proven to be the primary medium used to facilitate the transition of the traditionally powerful word-of-mouth referral system from offline to online. The question remains: How best can you make use of the power of reviews on your site?

For product reviews and commentary, there are two main approaches to enable UGC integration on product pages (the most relevant place to put them). One; it is possible to list a few reviews on the page with a link to a full review/feedback page; or, two you could simply include a hyperlink on the product page linking to the reviews. If you choose the former, ensure feedback is provided by registered purchasers if you sell online, or via registration or captcha requirements for non-purchasers.

The next step would be to ensure that you optimize the review pages themselves. Conduct keyword research on the product or brand, targeting words of negative and positive association. For example; this is one way to encompass the issues (in summary):

Scenario: I conducted some preliminary keyword research on iPhone looking at very generic research phrases like ’good iphone’, ‘bad iphone’ [sounds like a puppy in training] ‘great iphone’ and ‘iphone fail’. It generated a number of insights; we’ll look at three (please note, these findings are drawn from an external keyword research tool, and do not reflect the opinion of the magazine, nor those of the author of this article, regarding the iPhone’s ability or lack thereof to send emails, to deal with mobile messaging, or to work ‘overseas’):

1. A common question: ‘is the iPhone good overseas?’
2. Some people are concerned about iPhone email failing
3. iPhones are ‘good’ with mobile messaging

 How might you deal with this information?

1. Create one optimized page for each issue,
2. Link to each page from a hub area on the primary product page.
3. Generate external buzz and links to these pages by monitoring online conversation around the primary topic and answering and linking back using nofollows where warranted.

There are, of course numerous other strategies you can utilize to optimize your UGC including:

· Use featured reviews, where you place the reviews that receive the most ‘votes’ in a defined top area nearer to the fold included by date and possibly subtly. Never place your most positive reviews at the top and your negative reviews at the bottom; users may become wary of manipulation. If you’re getting a lot of bad reviews, think about your offering or the associated service, investigate and rectify. It’s great for R&D, for in-house cleaning and for in-house acknowledgement when individual people get named as ‘stars’!

· Inviting ‘opt-in email’ purchasers to review with a non-monetary incentive to do so

· Ensuring that ‘cleared’ reviews go live immediately. Frequent updating is important to rankings due to the fact that fresh content encourages more ‘frequent’ crawling by the ranking algorithms. Frequent caching has been found to impact positively on search results. Use webmaster tools if you don’t already.

· Minimizing bounce rates; those who surf to a review page are usually more qualified than those who bounced or left somewhere in their visit without clicking to the review page. They have already moved along the pathway in their quest to find a product to satisfy their need or want. Time spent on site is usually greater with reviews than other types of content, and conversion rates are higher than those who only visit the product page.

Consumers want to know what’s great about a product. If positive reviews include objective emotional feedback, the review can ‘speak’ to potential consumers who are looking for the same kind of experience. For example, a book review written by a mother highlighting the positive emotional bonding she experienced sharing the book with her teenager will be a sure hit for many moms trying to connect with their teenage daughters. 68% of consumers trust ‘people like me’ first for product advice. (Edelman Trust Barometer).

Dealing with Questions

· FAQs are an area that can be enhanced by UGC to make your site more usable and more valuable to visitors. Enabling an advanced UGC based FAQ hub can not only provide a more satisfying user experience while facilitating R&D via disclosure, it may also facilitate actual transactions due to easy question-response detection and direction, and decrease product returns. Also, include post sales service UGC as a primary link off the main product page.

· Live Q&A with a tech support member dedicated to all FAQ and other support issues should be enabled, with the option to allow the question and to be published online, incognito, or with some or full disclosure at the users discretion. If you service multiple time-zones, ensure you have staff to deal with the potential service requirement.

Negative vs. Positive Feedback

Don’t silo negative and positive feedback into separate areas. Negative feedback must be included with positive. In most cases, the majority of feedback will be positive, unless it is a really bad product or service in which case you withdraw it from the market, but keep the reviews live as Amazon did with the apparently diabolical HotWheels Slimecano;

· ‘My six year old son bought this with his own money and has already offered to give it away,’ and

· ‘ATTN: Do not buy this toy, even if it is on sale for 5 cents…’ are two relatively mild reviews.

Despite being discontinued, Amazon retains product information along with the more than 170 reviews which most certainly contributed to the Slimecano’s withdrawal from the shelves and halted production.

Bear in mind that negative consumer feedback provides authenticity and an opening for brand evangelists to offer alternative solutions; such as other consumers mentioning to potential iPhone customers that, even though the surface scratches easily, you can simply buy a case – thus providing great feedback for R&D and rebuttal.

This is Part 2 of a three part series on UGC. If you’d like to read part 1, it’s here UGC – Maximize Your Online Exposure with People Power!

Follow Laura on Twitter!

It wasn’t a documentary by any manner of means, it was a light-hearted comedy called ‘Confessions of a Shop-a-holic’, and I actually learned something. No, not about my shoe shopping … urm… never mind, about how it can work if you appeal to different every-day people on a very every-day level.

I reckon I’m an every-day person (with a mild shoe, bag and hat thingey going on…), so I wanted to give it a try with a brief touch on accountants, lawyers, PR folks, customers and shareholders. Let me know how you think I did…

Accountants – who want to make a profit online

‘Something for Every-one’ means great web profits, which means a great income statement and a good-looking balance sheet.

… – who want to make a loss online

Objective: to mess with Something-for-everyone

Hire a poor search optimizer and watch your web income fall. Follow up with a really inept sponsored search person and make a bigger loss pretty damn fast. In fact the more money you give them, the more they’ll lose. Tidy it up and it’s a great way to lose money ‘legitimately’ but you still need to show some kind of business case – though that’s not your fault, the VPF should have that nicely in-hand, and he in-turn can blame the COO and CEO and the Prez – and so on… You’ll likely miss a jail term – maybe.

Lawyers

‘Something for Every-One’ means you can ensure you get your legal speak in the right place, and where people can find your terms and conditions, privacy policies and more on the web.

You even get a step up because if you work with the ‘real SEO’ team and the web devs, you can make sure the bits you don’t want the public to see are still there for the right people, but not for the general public. An intranet is best of course, but there is always more. (I did a measly three years of undergrad law, and those three years left me knowing that from a legal stand point, there is ALWAYS more – it’s pretty much 100% guaranteed.)

General Admin

This is a pearl in obeisance to the ocean of general admin ‘stuff’ that makes up the day of the people who actually make the economy run (hat-tip).

SEOs (the ‘something for everyone’ folks) give you a new, different type of person to hire, a new type of training to employ, a different salary range to decipher and apply, and a different personality in entirety to deal with from an HR perspective and a general admin perspective. Define what you need (not what you want) well ahead of time because I have yet (after some years) to find any SEO that fits any stereotype, pigeonhole or preconceived idea of what an SEO should be, do and become.

Public Relations – Interested in positive PR

Utilize the SEOs (the actual search optimizers and something for everyone folks) for the benefit of your online press releases, include them in your PR drive to enable their creation of new pages around new taglines. Even better, assist them in their drive to write what they fondly call ‘link-bait’, and work with them in the social networks to create a PR/SEO optimized (not redundant, and yet somewhat) approach to dealing with detractors and supporting evangelists in real time.

… – Interested in negative PR

Go head-to-head against everything mentioned above. It will work. Even better, strive to pee-off the social networks as fast as you can. Again, 100% Guaranteed.

Customers

SEO (something for everyone) means they can find what they need when they’re already pre-qualified in terms of intent. The level of intent may vary, but that’s where really good SEOs (the optimizing type) have worked with design and dev to ensure a quick, effective targeted conversion funnel.

Customers find what they want and need, and get to buy it online in a usable, friendly, approachable, non-threatening, secure manner. Something for everyone hits the masses right there!

Shareholders

These guys are sometimes likened to the accountants who ‘don’t want a profit’ – but rarely. Most investors are short term, want a fast profit, don’t want undue risk, and have less than a million dollars.

Question:

How can we make their shareholding work for them short-term to encourage them to stay for a longer term?

Answer:

Where possible, offer them a track record of growth, something tangible apart from FS (Financial Statements), invite their feedback on the web-tangible to engage them (unlikely to have any feedback but the perception of involvement is created), show them proof of online sales performance and improvement (hello SEOptimizers* and other online marketing folks) via summary analytics data, and show them the potential for growth in the online arena via research. It’s there, even in these down times. It has a track record of outperforming traditional methods in terms of ROA.

The asterisk (*) above is to testify to the fact that for most well defined and optimized online businesses or web sites, the organic traffic nearly always outperforms any other form of online advertising, including PPC in terms of both pure traffic and conversions, naturally resulting in the lowest cost per conversion apart from email, which is generally far more targeted, and limited in scope…

 ‘Something for EveryOne’ – It’s SEO, it works, it’s undeniable, it’s cheaper than almost any other form of online exposure, and it can be tailored to support every on and offline marketing initiative.

…

Something for EveryOne? …. It’s SEO…

Twitter

The process that this went through consists of far more than I can do justice to here, but I wanted to share some really cool learnings with you all.

First: If you have a home page, don’t be unwilling to change it if the VOC warrants such a change.

Second: Make sure you listen to your customers. This can take the form of customer reviews, feedback through the socnets, usability studies and numerous other forms. Your budget and existing level of engagement may dictate your initial approach.

Third: Don’t keep changing your home page willy-nilly as that will confuse your users, and if you do change it, make sure you keep your primary brand message as consistent as possible.

Fourth: Ensure you approach any redesign, especially a VOC driven redesign with clear objectives based on your predetermined KPI. In this case a primary objective was to provide a much clearer ‘decision point’ to facilitate the navigation of first time users to their true product of choice, and…

Fifth: Facilitate their optimal engagement path, leading to a more streamlined and facilitated conversion path.

Here was the challenge and the result along with VOC feedback:

1. The original home page was very Online Product focused, not a bad thing, but not beneficial to the numerous CD/download customers

• “Home page was sneaky in that it wasn’t clear Intuit is directing people to the online tax returns.”
• “Ended up in the preparation of a return online which is not what I wanted.”
• “The download version of QuickTax I was looking for was not immediately apparent as an option, though I did later find it at the bottom of the page.”

2. The XD (experience design), usability, marketing and copy messaging folks came up with this new home page

The VOC now tells a NEW story

• “The homepage made my selection easy. The options were straight forward.”
• “Clear information on the opening page.”
• “Easy site to navigate and purchase download software.”

The Analytics Results in a Nutshell

• The new design achieved what it set out to do for desktop sales increasing them by 17% with immediate effect, with no negative impact on online sales.
• The site has since experienced a 14% increase in task completion

Lance (who spear-headed the project) had 3 Key-insights for Take-away:

1. What the business wants isn’t always good for the customer
2. Listening to customers can change how the business thinks
3. Behavioural and attitudinal data are the judge and jury in the court of expert opinion

Follow QuickTax and me on Twitter!

Disclaimer: nothing I say here may or should be attached to any employer, current or previous. This is my personal blog. The views expressed on this page are mine alone and not those of my employer.

I only made it to the Bat Cruise (awesome, live music, cruising on Lady Bird Lake, great people) and then to the incredible Salt Lick thingey-do. Picture beer-donkeys, chicken s**t bingo, mechanical bull riding, live western band, great Tex-Mex and fantastic hosts, great people… and you can’t do it justice.

I wanted to put a summary of my key learning’s down for everyone, and hopefully show you how much you all missed and how much you really should try to go to next years.

First, if you didn’t see their see zany intro on ‘The Forbidden Zone: Missing Influentials’ I highly recommend it (+/- 5 minutes excluding outtakes).

CONTAGIOUS MEDIA

This is basically the media you apply to any viral strategy you employ online via the socnets, or aimed at the social network market.

It works best when targeted at personality types (I particularly liked the “mullet” definition applied to personality – work in the front, party in the back!). The idea is to split your target market within a social network by personality type and target those personality needs and wants via different approaches.

The Huffington Post co-founder Jonah Peretti explained how they apply real time metrics and template movement facilitation to their editors to move popular topics up the page, less popular topics down the page, and offer front page real time involvement based on user interaction. In the background they have links to popular socnet conversations, sites, topics and offer great web-wide interaction for all readers. A measure of their enormous success is in their growth, and in Jonah’s incredible entrepreneurial ability and foresight regarding socnet interest including the Nike Sweatshop initiative featured on NBC.

Apart from targeting personality types, it also works best when the expectations are set to those types regarding rewards for involvement: for some folks it is reward enough to be part of a community – for them pure collaboration is the name of the game. Others want something tangible; so you can think contests, rewards, sweepstakes etc… it is well worth exploring your social network targets, defining your markets and then nailing your personality types and developing your engagement strategy based on those learnings as well as your objectives. If you want pure collaboration, that market is approached differently to a market that you may want to engage to encourage pure viral spread in the form of open sweepstakes.

YOUR INFLUENTIALS

A big take-away for me was the fact that it is possible to identify your major influentials; your multipliers. In the case of the speakers on this topic, affluent middle-aged women were their target multipliers. How to target them? Well, I’m not going to spoil next years conference for you, but apply basic target marketing based on demographic strongly salted with socnet requirements, and peppered with the online bus objective for your initiative.

Another big take-away was that supporting evangelists and dealing with detractors is not the be-all and end-all of your approach. What you really need to be doing is turning your neutrals into fans, and then your fans into ambassadors.

Determine what these folks want, apply an open stealth campaign to integrate and engage them, push the engagement into collaboration via a securely defendable social media plan, and make tactical refinements based on learnings.

1. social media is not that new that there are not a lot of very strong, very savvy players
2. social media is still new enough that even the biggest folks are learning and make mistakes.

If you make a mess of something, own up straight away, apologise and offer an alternative. If something works, give kudos to your socnet members and participators; especially your multipliers.

WHAT ABOUT THE ENGINES?

Another take-away was to make use of the SERPs as a playground for social media target research. Pick some phrases you would like to be associated with, and some you do not want to be associated with… this is very different to traditional keyword research as it is based on wording and commentary you will have picked up in the socnets via reputation management tools (like Radian6).

Check out what Google listings are for those top 10-20 positive and negative terms and proactively target those terms in the social networks, including online PR.

CONCLUSION

This is a small sample of stuff from only 3 sessions I attended (and takes up 3 slides of my 17 slide feedback ppt presentation). Obviously as my employer (Intuit) paid for me to go, my learnings in toto will be applied to our offerings, and I can only strongly encourage anyone who reads this blog to attend next years BazaarVoice Social Summit. It’s interesting and groundbreaking, and the insights are all easily applied and implementable – if you have a progressive management team willing to let you play in the Social space. Read more about how you can encourage your management to do just that!

BAZAARVOICE MENTION

Customer reviews are the way to go regarding UGC integration from a marketing insights and R&D learning platform direction at the very least. Quite simply, these guys rock.

Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter and let’s see what we can continue to do together to make social networks a legitimate point of customer collaboration, communication and learning, not just for marketing, but for R&D… better products and better services will make for a greater global competitive advantage for our businesses… we need that, and we can do it, together!

Disclaimer: nothing I say here may or should be attached to any employer, current or previous. This is my personal blog. The views expressed on this page are mine alone and not those of my employer.

Speaking Across Disciplines – Get their FULL attention, and their MAXIMUM contribution

Many people involved in IT are first born children or only kids. If you are a third child of 5, but are the first born son or daughter, then you are also likely to have traditional first-born traits (fascinating long-term study by Dr. Kevin Leman). I’ll include a list of some identified common traits just below.

Apparently, people who make the best account managers (sales folks of all levels) are last born children. There are again exceptions – if your parents had 3 children (within 8 to 10 years) and you were the youngest, and then they had another child (or children) 5 or more years later, you would also exhibit youngest child traits – assuming you fit the generalized model, which is amazingly accurate in most cases.

Middle children (second born sons, daughters – all with exceptions, provided preceding and following sibling came along within a maximum of 3-4 years either side) are the hardest to pin-point, but are creative, easy-going folks – again in general.

Some common traits of first borns according to Dr Leman

·  Perfectionist and organized

·  Reliable & conscientious

·  Hard-driving natural leader

·  Critical and mostly serious

·  Reader

·  Logical

·  Does not like suspense or surprises

Some common traits of middle-children

·  Mediator

·  Compromising and loyal

·  Diplomatic

·  Hates conflict

·  Very sociable (real life)

·  Maverick but secretive

·  Unspoiled

Some common traits of last kids

·  Charming

·  Loves attention

·  Tenacious

·  Manipulative and shirks blame

·  People person

·  Engaging & affectionate

·  Loves surprises

And for the Onlies

·  Little adult by age 7

·  Very thorough

·  Cautious

·  Voracious reader

·  Can’t stand to fail with very high expectations of self

·  Low high tolerance for others

·  More comfortable with older or younger people

·  Uses ‘very’, ‘absolutely’, ‘exactly’, ‘totally’, ‘extremely’ a lot in conversation

(if any of this strikes a chord, I really recommend you get his book.)

What on earth does this have to do with SEO?

SEO’s need to make things happen. They need to:

·  Sell their offering

·  Convince stake and shareholder (inhouse)

·  Engage and manage clients and stakeholders

·  Engage and manage a team

·  Co-ordinate, delegate, coerce, wangle and be devoted to the team

·  Do the work on time and to budget

·  Check everything

·  Research and share

·  Encourage and facilitate

·  Strategize and organize

·  Be creative, critical and logical

… and more

Obviously, any one person cannot possibly fulfill each of these tasks as effectively as a small team might. This post is therefore more concerned with big in-house SEO resourcing than small, but the insights can be applied across the board.

Also, this is not a book J and therefore it needs to be short. I could have fun with this, but the ideas are not my own; application to our industry may be a first, but Dr Leman deserves full credit either way.

I am not saying only hire people for open recs according to their birth-order. What I am saying that perhaps hiring a dynamic Lead SEO Account Manager whose responsibility it is to be client facing, diplomatic and prepared to take clients at face value without judgement might not best fit a first born or only child.

A first born or only qualified SEO with experience may, however, be your perfect match to a more driven, pressurized, bottom-line dedicated, highly organized logical position requiring tactics and refined managerial skill.

Let’s see how all this might work to give you the in-house SEO dream team you want that not only sells your SEO initiatives to in-house peeps and stakeholders, gets it organized, and is on the cusp of what’s happening, but gets it done on time and under budget!

A. Oversight team manager who does the charts, deals with the money factor and the reporting,organizing and overall management

- First born or Only (bearing in mind exceptions due to time lapse in birth order and gender).

B. Team manager who deals with cross-disciplines, and handles the social media aspect

- Middle children (again considering exceptions to the rule)

C. Client facing or stakeholder-facing manager and facilitator to sell, get approval and pursue set monetary objectives tenaciously to ensure team gets the best deal they can, while getting the majority of praise themselves

- Last borns (also considering exceptions)

So the next question begs…

HOW TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH PERSONALITY TO ENGAGE THEM MOST EFFECTIVELY

A. Give your first born managers

Data, facts, figures, expectations, clear real and desired goals, autonomy to proceed without extensive oversight and red-tape, minimize time-tracking requirements with over-arching categories, trust them to deliver the best they can. Give them performance based bonuses. Encouragement will be taken more seriously than less tangible ‘praise’. E.g:

‘You’re wonderful! I love that you headed this!’ (praise)

v.s.

‘I really like how you put this together, the program is performing well due to your leadership. Keep it going!’ (encouragement)

Back this with the performance based bonuses on a quarterly basis, and you have an employee for life. Watch they don’t burn themselves out, so make sure the maximum bonus is both realistic and achievable, and that you let them know weekly how they are performing in relation to achieving it with clear guidelines on where they need to brush-up. And give them a break. These guys will burn their bottoms for you if you treat them right. Lose them, and you have to start again. It’s not easy to get these guys, and bear in mind they are more likely to get head-hunted than most for in-house delivery… Not sales. Try to get them to sell and see them leave within 3 months.

B. Give your second born managers

Clear requirements. Ensure that they have full support of the first born managers to enable them to escalate issues without fear of conflict with team members below or above.  Request regular (weekly) debriefing on work done, their expectations and their understanding of what they have achieved. Give them the ability to lead and run social media campaigns once they have worked out their clear reporting and objectives for that campaign (in conjunction with reporting manager – 1st born or only).

Let them message informally on twitter, facebook etc (or manage a team that does) once you have set a limited number of specific guidelines (e.g. never comment on competitors, don’t get too ‘friendly’ but be approachable for the brand etc) Encouragement is better than praise, but praise is good for these guys. Better in some cases than encouragement – read on….

C. Give your third born managers

Clear requirements on client objectives, business objectives, and what you want to achieve via SEO – or SEM (more holistically). Then let them run. Don’t expect emails and reporting from them, so make sure they have a personal assistant to do their paper work, or you might not get it, and if you do it may be unclear and a bit of a mess. Ensure they know that their PA is not accountable for what they provide, they will be accountable. Remove the ability to shift blame – which last borns can do with exceptional alacrity, goodwill and innocence. They must read and sign everything, with the clear understanding that while they don’t do the paperwork, they must read it before they sign it as their signature ‘makes it so’. Frequent phone or face-to-face meeting (preferably) are required to ingrain protocols and bottom-line expectations, but need to be brief and targeted at humour and appreciation for what has been achieved versus what you want to achieve. Make them realize that you won’t let them off the hook, but you will let them play.

Again, I strongly recommend Dr Leman’s books about birth order, stress management, child management and more. I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but what he does say makes sense to me, and has – in a personal vein – made an enormous difference in my life. This post is based on the reading I have done to date (fascinating books), and I wanted to share what I had learned that might make a difference NOW to SEOs everywhere, and managers everywhere.

Chances are you’re already in the right place, but if you aren’t, and if you’re unhappy, overstressed, under utilized or under appreciated, this might speak to you. Again, these are generalizations, and the economy is tough right now. Regardless, I hope this was of interest.

Happy SEO-ing, and come see me at SMX next week!

1. First, conduct extensive keyword research. From your potential keyword universe, you filter your preferred sample of primary (and some longer tail) phrases for onpage SEO. The full universe of keywords is applied to PPC.

2. If you are unsure of which phrases to target from an SEO perspective, then complete your PPC campaign and make it live. Careful review and analysis of your top performing PPC keyphrases (based on your predetermined KPIs) will give you a great indication of which terms to target from an SEO perspective. Bear in mind, for many major or well known brands, the brand and product names usually account for more than 90% of all traffic. Adding the primary non-brand keyphrases to the mix in the primary on-page SEO elements will not detract from the strength of the brand exposure, but will likely improve your appearance in the SERPs for related non-brand searches. Ensuring that these non-brand keyphrases form part of the anchor text in a backlink strategy is a great strategy.

3. When conducting your keyword research, pay close attention to potential negative keywords for application to the PPC campaign;

3.i. In practice: If you are performing keyword research for a prostate cancer clinic, words you want to include to add your running negative keyword list will include words that crop up in the research on the primary research phrase ‘cancer’, and will probably include:

• sign (people with cancer tend to search for cancer ‘signs’ plural while people interested in the astrological cancer ‘sign’ need to be filtered out)
• tropic
• horoscope
• astrologic (anything to do with ‘astro’ really)
• every other body part (you’re targeting prostate cancer, so you are not interested in ‘brain’ cancer, ‘breast’ cancer, ‘colon’ cancer, ‘kidney’ cancer etc)

3.ii. On a slightly different (and happier) note; if you are a winter vacation resort, and you don’t offer an outdoor hotpool, hot tub, warm spring, steam bath, jacuzzi (and all other combinations) make sure you are not ‘broad’ phrase advertising on the term ‘winter vacation resort’. Run that logic throughout your campaign creation, specifically ensuring you refine your exposure to terms you actually can service, and for which there are dedicated pages on your site.

4. Effective PPC campaign conception, creation and management is not the remit of this post, but in summary, make your campaigns geo-targeted if you serve multiple locations; if not then set campaign by primary topic such as ‘treatment’, ‘signs and symptoms’, ‘statistics’, ‘support’ etc. This step would be the adword level for a geographically diverse campaign. Ensure that adcopy includes the adword level primary search term in the title and at least once in the description, with the primary search term in every URL; i.e. ‘cancer’ at a bare minimum. Create multiple adcopy to allow for a/b testing, make sure you have your goals set, watch your budget, watch your KPI and make sure your landing pages are relevant, highly appropriate and easy to navigate with clear purpose and direction in both copy and call-to-action. Here’s more info on PPC creation why’s and how’s.

5. If your SEO contingent is targeted with assisting IA in the development of a new micro-site to complement a banner ad/TV/radio/magazine etc ad strategy, make sure knowledge of the objectives, along with all the keyword research, is passed to the PPC folks for integration into the PPC initiative.

6. If the company decides on a short term promotion targeting PPC and banner ad placement online, pass the information to SEO where they can include the target tag-line and primary likely converting phrase into a link off the home page to the PPC landing page. The chances are that your home page is crawled at least once every week to two weeks (if you are a small business and don’t update very often). If you are a larger business with more dynamism in terms of visitor volume and interaction, and if you regularly change your content, your home page may be crawled multiple times a day.

7. Most active blogs are also crawled far more frequently than less ‘dynamic’ sites. Therefore, link the corporate blog to the PPC landing page as well, ensuring that the PPC landing page is not excluded via robots.txt, or misuse of noindex etc. I read a great article on crawl and cache rate (due to effective page management and maintenance) and the effect on rankings a few weeks ago by Scott Hendison – totally worth a good few minutes of your time.

8. SEO and PPC may have very different KPI; for example, PPC may be aimed at pure profit or ROAS (return or adspend), while SEO may be aimed primarily at brand exposure.

This does not mean you need to limit either approach to any single goal. In fact I strongly urge you to set up a number of PPC and SEO goals including registration, conversion and contact as well as more tactical goals including bounce rate on select pages, most visited sub-pages, visitor paths and visitor locations. Insight into general web analytics geographic location of visitors can give insights on where to further promote PPC, or withdraw it if it is not effective.

Bounce rate can indicate landing pages that are not working, both from a PPC and an SEO perspective. Apply full web analytics to both and integrate them so that you only have one primary interface. It is very easy to tie your Google Analytics to both AdWords and general data. I strongly urge you to do so.

In Closing: Integrating, managing and reporting on both SEO and PPC initiatives simultaneously with the same team, or with teams that are encouraged to work effectively together to complement and support each other will make an enormous difference to your online presence in the SERPs. It’s not getting easier out there, but while competition is increasing, effective management is not necessarily following suit – yet. Give yourself a competitive advantage in 2009 and start today!

Happy New Year!!!

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 !!!

The middle web is that new playground between highly limited mobile phone internet use and full blown computer internet use via high speed access; and is made possible by a range of new hand held facilitators including the iPhone. Not that new admittedly, but in terms of time in the US 2 years is not long (release of Blackberry), and the iPhone was first released in the US in June ’07.

According to mobile advertising company AdMob, traffic from Apple’s iPhone on their advertising network almost doubled in August, and the iPhone saw the fastest growth of all smartphones worldwide, closely followed by the Samsung Instinct (some dispute the ‘smartphone’ status of the Instinct – I’m just not that smart, no pun intended.) In fact, users of the iPhone ended August with more than 2.9 million mobile Web page requests per day.

SO… what’s with mobile search marketing then? In terms of pure numbers very few companies are embracing mobile search as a legitimate advertising platform. I can’t help but wonder why – especially considering predictions of in excess of $3BN this year in mobile ad spend, and more than 14 million phones sold – very confusing…

·         It’s not hard to design a corporate branded .mobi site – or even easier – dedicated single landing pages for mobile PPC initiatives.

·         It’s not hard to make sensible mobile PPC ads with 18 characters per line.

·         It’s not hard to cost effectively alter an existing banner ad for mobile ad display through AdWords (or other platforms)

·         Analytics are pretty good, and getting better

·         Historic data indicates that even then more than 46 million mobile users used mobile search functions in Q3 last year according to Nielsen, that figure has nearly doubled.

Perhaps search behavior is different on mobiles, perhaps not so much. There are numerous studies underway and the data gives every indication of being both ground-breaking and very interesting.

I honestly believe that if your client is even remotely geotargeted in their offering, and if they provide any form of local service, including entertainment, home services, hospitality, health, pet care, or are involved in the sale of products from geographically limited locations, they should get involved in mobile PPC geo-targeting to an appropriate level, and give it a test drive. It is possible to use multipliers or other statistical formulae to run comparative tests on traditional PPC vs mobile PPC campaigns, bearing in mind the fact that your markets may or may not overlap – but you should be able to compare ROI and other KPI.

I actually think that anyone participating in PPC should run a trial PPC initiative on mobile PPC, even if it is simply based on a highly geo-targeted test market. If it works, the mobile world becomes a whole new oyster of its own… Why miss it? Run it on AdWords with strict constraints on spend and display. You can turn it off any time, you can check data whenever you like. Just make sure you allow for a reasonable period of time to make an informed decision without running scared.

Some iPhone wireless networks are free, enabling iPhone users to connect at no charge – don’t be frightened. Find out more about the medium, the advertising options, free connection areas, the set up costs and resources required to initiate a trial campaign, and give it a try that provides you with statistically significant data. Run it over 3 separate periods of time, A/B test your ads and landing pages… go to it with enthusiasm assuming you will be pleasantly surprised. If it doesn’t work, you won’t have lost much, but you will have gained enormous insights into another new market and medium, hopefully for the better.

Mobile phones are here to stay in the world as we know it, mobile use is increasing; the middle web is exhibiting a very fast growth rate, outpacing growth of traditional internet adoption (which is not surprising). People are using mobile search functionality, especially on the new generation of smartphones…

The Point?

Adapt. Adopt. Be proactive. Investigate, explore and seriously consider

mobile search marketing as a potential addition to your marketing mix!

****update 11.12.08 ****

FEEDBACK HAS BEEN AWESOME! WE HAVE HAD TO SET A DEADLINE… ALL SURVEY QUESTIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY 5TH DECEMBER. RESULTS WILL BE MADE PUBLIC ON THE 10TH.

We feel safe saying the more we have, the more statistically significant the data is… Please do take part. Results are free!

***end update****

We thought it about time someone involved in search conducted a little survey of their own. Being the cheapo that I am this is a free survey, with free software, and offers you nothing at all in terms of remuneration. It is however totally anonymous.

Please take the FIRST 10 questions of the 10×10 SEM Pro Survey!

Please take the SECOND 10 questions of the 10×10 SEM Pro Survey!

Please take the THIRD 10 questions of the 10×10 SEM Pro Survey!

Please take the Fourth (hardcore) 30 questions of the 10×10 SEM Pro Survey!

The objective

To give you, our industry pros, real insights into who’s doing what, for how much, working from where, and what their real thoughts are on on-page seo, backlinks, favorite blogs, analytics, search engine practice and protocols, search behavior, tools and more.

The not-so exciting news

There will be a series of around 10 surveys, each only 10 questions (most multiple choice so you just ‘click’ a few times), all anonymous, over a period of 2 months. I would be very grateful if you would take part in all of them. To that end, please sign up for our RSS feed to know when the new questionnaires have been posted, or just check back here and look in the new, fresh, shiny ‘Innovation’ Category.

The good news

All the results will be collated and a full report will be published on SEMInsights within 2 weeks of the final survey, all prettied up and everything with graphs and commentary. I will also be asking some of our finest to assist me with the commentary and insights.

Two gentle requests

1. Please answer honestly, in full, and please do post your thoughts and opinions on what other questions you would like to have answered in the comments. You questions will be included in the coming surveys.

2. Please get as many SEO professionals as possible to take part. Just send them the link to this post

http://seminsights.com/innovation/search-marketing-pro-survey-08-09 

This is a real SEM survey, by a real SEM on an SEM blog to answer real SEM questions about our industry, our livelihoods, our expectations, our strengths and our future.

Please take the FIRST 10 questions of the 10×10 SEM Pro Survey!

Please take the SECOND 10 questions of the 10×10 SEM Pro Survey!

 Please take the THIRD 10 questions of the 10×10 SEM Pro Survey!

Please take the Fourth (hardcore) 30 questions of the 10×10 SEM Pro Survey!

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.