While this is in no way meant as an hysterical babble, I know some may find it such. I urge you only to continue reading having been warned that it may impact your thoughts on social media – in how much you choose to share… or not. It’s an enigma in many ways.

In the second world war – not so very long ago in the grand scheme of things – anyone in Germany suspected of being a Jew was rounded up and summarily transported to a camp and most likely executed. Neighbors betrayed neighbors, friends betrayed friends – not for fun you understand, but because there was a noose around their own necks. They were known to have associated with Jews or to have ‘Jewish tendencies’ – the shops they visited, the clothes they bought. It was very easy to be caught out as an ‘accomplice’. The Nazis even had what they called ‘persils’ – ‘clean’ documents for any Jew who would turn in a fellow Jew – and how did they encourage that type of betrayal? Fear, and promises of death to family members.

The persil seekers were sent to cobblers and shoe stores. They waited for the Jews on the run to come in and get their shoes mended, and they ‘befriended’ them – and then betrayed them.

Too much knowledge shared with anyone outside of your closest family meant the camps. It was an environment of fear, treachery and death.

That was 70 years ago. The other most renowned evidences of word of mouth betrayal in our western society (though there are thousands more – and this is not meant to diminish those) involve the French Revolution and the English Court of the 15-1600’s.

• During the revolution it got to a point where business rivals were denouncing their competitors as ‘royalists’ to ensure their trip to the guillotine;
• During Henry 8th’s time as well as during the time of his daughters Bloody Mary and Elizabeth the first – during the huge upheaval of the Church in England, thousands were denounced as heretics and burned in Smithfield, or beheaded on Tower Green. This account doesn’t even consider the desperate state for hundreds of years on the greater continent where just about anyone could denounce his fellow brother/sister/neighbor/priest as an heretic during the dreadful inquisition.

I know that we are a free society, but history has taught us that freedom is hard-won and earned. Hard work and dedication to a clear objective keep it so. I’m as guilty as many of airing my opinions and thoughts in our free press society – but if ever we needed to be concerned about what big-brother, his cronies – or his enemies – were wondering, one only has to look at the reputation management tools of today to know that every-thought we put down in the moment is kept safe for future reference by… who knows who?

Just a thought to consider, one I do anyway. Perhaps I am paranoid, perhaps I am too realistic. Perhaps I am over-protective, perhaps I am a fool. Regardless – these are some thoughts I wanted to share – whether you agree with them or not – perhaps they may generate some conversation among you and your friends – or not.

BUT after years of experience, research and seeing how things work on numerous sites across multiple industries, as well as chatting with experts focused on core deliverables, this is a list of my ‘ultimate conversion tips’ with a short list of links to other fantastic, and more comprehensive, conversion tip posts, documents and articles.

Conversion Tips – Get Started People!

I’m going to make a few very basic assumptions:

• Traffic should be sent to relevant, quality, targeted pages,
• Design should avoid clutter and navigation on dedicated landing pages should be minimal,
• Content should get to the point with a relevant large headline <h1> with key content above the fold, even if the page is very long,
• Promissory enticements, and repeat calls to action are important, but histrionic copy may detract from authenticity and the perception of trustworthiness; things like ‘Today only!’, ‘You’ll regret it if you don’t buy it RIGHT NOW!’, and other dire declarations common to pushy sales-men.
• Testimonials, reviews and statements must all be true, but more importantly, verifiable

With those out of the way, I’ll head on into a countdown of the top 10 conversion tips I personally have found really make a difference throughout my  experience.

10. Make your add-to-cart buttons exactly that – ‘add to cart’¹. The button colour can also have an effect – depending on industry. In many cases I have found it is not a significant factor, but a charity site found that green definitely contributed to online donations².

9. Understand your target market. Know what they like online. Even if you don’t have dedicated usability studies and access to paid research faculties, it’s actually pretty easy to check (give yourself a reasonably wide margin of error and narrow it with tests). Use Google Ad Planner (beta) to find sites that appeal to your target audience, and analyze them. Then to get an idea of their PPC spend, projected revenue and more, Adgooroo (or free similar products) can provide insights. Take that data and extrapolate out using your tailored SEO equation. It’s guestimates in some cases, but it does usually give you a pretty good idea of what is and isn’t working, what your audience likes and does not like in terms of design, content – and it’s always important to filter and sort by industry to get trends for relevant tactics and strategies for your own industry/site.

8. Your online (web) and offline (retail) competitors may well be different, but keeping track of what both are doing online is very important. If you can see they’re testing something, mark it down for a future test yourself. If it’s something you’ve done already you can make a note of their approach and any differences. Following up again with a similar test is not a bad idea to glean learning’s, unless your first test was a total bust – in which case you’re ahead of the curve – a nice place to be. Conduct a usability study of their page, take the learning’s and run with them. Learn from their victories and their mistakes.

7. Usability has already been mentioned a few times, so in essence if the term is new to you – it’s about how fast the essence and functionality of a page is communicated, and how quickly and effectively it is engaged. Show your page to folks outside of your department who fit into you general demographic (age/sex/geo-location) and give them 6-8 seconds maximum to tell you what they think the page:

• is about,
• if they like it,
• if they would leave it,
• what stands out,
• if they would bookmark it.

Like Family Fortunes – quick, fast and fun. Have competitions for a free lunch for the team who agree (or disagree) the most. If they take more than 8 seconds to tell you what the page is about – you got a problem. If they want to leave it – problem. If nothing stands out – being unmemorable is bad from a landing page perspective as far as return conversions are concerned – and while they’re not generally the target, your audience may be characterized by research-and-select based behaviour and you need them to remember your page one way or the other; tag-line, brand name, imagery, propensity to bookmark (you need to offer that functionality)… figure out what it is they use to remember you by testing. Be as usable and user-friendly to your users as possible without being a kid’s game site, unless that’s what you are…

6.  Bear in mind email, DM, banner ad, TV ad, radio ad etc web landing pages are all different, or should be. Each target market demographic is different in some way; older/younger; attentive/inattentive; employed/stay-at-home; employed/retired; busy/bored and so forth.

If you can target your landing pages to convert the demographic you are specifically targeting, it’s all the better. That requires in-company communications and campaign scheduling. It also requires getting full details from your TV/radio/print(where-ever) folks to make sure you have a heads up to online-target the right folks with the best content and design, at the right time with effective use of your vanity URL. Clearly you’ll have vanity URL’s to effectively track activity, as well as a crack phone team/different call-in numbers.

This is about conversion. There are a lot of different sources you need to consider for inclusion as separate entities in your armament .

5. If your conversion page includes a form, keep the mandatory elements for completion to a minimum. Not ideal for market research sure, but ideal for conversion. Include auto fills wherever possible, make it as easy as you can. Tick email sign-ups and notifications ‘OFF’ and encourage click to subscribe with enticing content offers/future discounts – whatever your product/service and market may find of interest. Don’t leave it clicked as ‘Yes/Opt-in’ unless at the bottom of the form, and even then be careful. Encourage them to want to hear more from you. Experienced web writers can effectively manage that conundrum. I’ve seen it work. The objective is initial conversion – repeat conversion is a somewhat different animal. Focus on your core objective with your landing page.

4. A lot of folks find that the ability to print a pdf to refer to is of use. This is especially of interest when it comes to big purchase decisions. Make sure those pages have everything they need with a print option. If you can manage to include a print coupon or discount percentage on print only  with clear legalese to that effect that’s even better for the end user when they are doing their comparisons. Stress your tech specs/reviews/price/capacity/capability/functionality/requirements/ whatever are your selling points. Make sure the pdf is usably designed, and always leave a clear link to the dedicated, targeted conversion page they first found in the copy that can both be easily typed into a browser, or clicked to via a pdf. It’s all about the conversion.

3. Make it easy for comparison shoppers. More and more people are using sites like pricegrabber/ebay/amazon/kijiji etc to search. Review and check pricing on products and services. You don’t have to be cheapest. You do need to be the most informative, authoritative and have a track record of delivery and performance – reviews are becoming more and more important. Even if you don’t have them on your site, enable them via your third party online vendors. Pay attention to what peeps are doing in terms of CTR and conversion, and also pay attention to your review commentary. Pass it to R&D and support. Conversion optimization is not a silo effect. You need to feed your learning’s on.

2. A/B test everything. The copy/size/colours/placement of your buttons; the functionality of your page; headlines; copy length/grammar/formality; image size/colour variation/placement/ type; text size and colour; page layout/design and navigation placement; the navigation itself; calls to action. Visual click heat-maps are great to gain an understanding of paths of interest as well as which areas of the page are underperforming, or which buttons/calls-to-action/links are underperforming. Moving, changing and testing can give you the best possible design, content, and conversion tactics if you do it consistently and with accurate, quality tools.

1. It’s a harsh truth, but a necessary one that many affiliates would agree with even if reluctantly; while you can master – and I mean guru status – 1 (maybe 2 specialties) in general; ‘a-jack-of-all-trades is master-of-none’. If you really want to make a difference in terms of landing page conversion, you need a specialist. If possible, you should have a team of specialists each contributing their own dedicated area of expertise to maximize your users landing page exposure and experience and thus your own conversions;

• hire an SEM for SEO and PPC,
• a social expert for SMM,
• an expert web copy writer for web writing,
• a proven web designer for landing page design,
• an experience designer for additional conversion tips and tricks, as well as
• a qualified web tester to handle your actual testing.

Of course not every business can afford a perfect ‘dream-team’, but if you know what you want to achieve, and give yourself time to achieve it that is realistic and dependant on your resourcing (people or time) limitations, there is no reason that a smaller team of dedicated pros willing to get down and dirty with research and testing can’t make a significant difference to your conversion rates. I speak from experience when I say it’s tough out there, and it’s getting tougher. As a man (or woman) alone, you’ll get there, but it will take you a lot longer, so use the net to gain from other’s experiences to simplify your own learning curve. Bigger businesses can afford dream teams, and those teams perform. Depending on what you’re selling online, it is imperative to your businesses or sites survival and continuance that you be able to compete at some level.

Happy conversions folks!

¹ www.getelastic.com/add-to-cart-buttons/

² http://www.donordigital.com/projects/donordigital_donation_page_optimization_research.pdf – the bottom of this article includes links to an additional 2 research articles:

• Improving Conversion 50-60% by Applying Continuity and Congruence
• 7 rules for landing page optimization

Other resources

- Unbounce.com ebook – 101 Landing page tips

- Seldomstatic.com – Top landing page tips from the pros

- eMarketing Testing – Conversion Papers

There is more freedom (and lack of cost) associated with effective in-house management, but it always surprises me as to how this type of move is met by the engine reps and other folks still using agencies.

In-house you’re after the lowest possible CPA, and the best possible ROAS. You’re also looking at overall profit for the business – but that can’t be done on a short term basis in a big brand, so I’ll stick with ROAS for now. (CPA is slightly different and affected by more than one variable or campaign depending on your analytics.)

My budget was cut dramatically in my first month of in-house for external reasons I won’t go into. And yet we managed to optimize until we dropped, and we maintained expectations on year to index levels for conversions, sales and unit volumes while falling drastically short of expected traffic levels. Makes you think, no?

My “in-house” Point

When PPC is in-house, and your deliverable is to provide great ROAS and minimal CPA, as a search marketer you are unaffected by the (often valid) claims that pure exposure on the long (generic) tail is worth the investment. You are also less affected by the need to maintain or increase spend for %age remuneration purposes. Obviously agencies have to deliver, it’s their job to do so, and there are many that do a great job including the agency we recently moved from. However, when you are told to cut-to-the-chase and give it maximum return on the dollar, it’s nice to have it in-house.

It’s also much faster, more cost effective and efficient to make changes to everything; from new campaigns, to revamped adcopy; from redirecting to new landing pages to bid-management… In a very small nutshell – it’s faster, easier and has more immediate visibility for your stakeholders when you have the opportunity of doing it cost-free and quickly with the ability to pull and repurpose reports at will as you manage the campaigns hands-on.

My “Personal Development” Point

If you are interested in growing as a business in the PPC realm and can afford to hire a PPC specialist in-house, you’ll likely save money – assuming they ARE pro. It’s easy to check; are they AdWords Qualified? Were/are they an affiliate? Who did they do PPC for previously?… They should be able to give you general data without betraying confidence. And it is data you should be able to check in general.

But if you can get a good PPC pro in-house and help them grow – they will likely give you results at a fraction of the cost, and you can help them achieve their own career objectives by facilitating their learning curve, or contributing to it.

Happy PPC!

My comments as an ex-teacher on the post:

1. Many parents are irresponsible
2. Many parents are clueless
3. Many parents are caring and concerned
4. I understand the post, but do not condone their approach

For the irresponsible,

This is a wake-up call to listen to the teachers of your children. You put them in the school. If you don’t like what they do – even in public school – you can make your voices heard, if you take the time:

• Ask for data
• Ask for solutions
• Recommend solutions
• Move your kids
• Relocate

Your kids are the biggest blessing the Good Lord ever gave you. If you don’t like where they are, or the teachers they have. Do something. If you don’t care, or are silenced by government rhetoric– take them home and teach them yourself. It’s not easy.

For the clueless

Parents! You were children once.

• Do you remember what you loved and hated about your parents?
• Do you remember what you wished they had been?
• Do you remember what it felt like to ‘feel alone’, ‘no-one understands me’, ‘no-one cares’, ‘I’m nothing’
• Did you ever feel like ‘I have nothing to offer compared to peter, paul, sally’, ‘my parents don’t care so if I disrespect my teachers, it’s all good’’, ‘my parents don’t love me, why should I show care to others?’ and on and on

Parents are ultimately responsible for how their children behave in their younger school years. Sure, from the age of 12 and up they should know how to be responsible members of society – but that is NOT the teacher’s or the school’s responsibility. That is the parent’s responsibility, with some reliance on the teachers teaching them the academics that are age associated.

For the Caring and Concerned

• I can’t comment on this school, but I do know that teachers tend to chat in the staff room about the kids in their classes and their perceptions of the parents. Most are incredibly impartial and do their utmost to be fair in the classroom – and it’s not easy.
• It’s also not the teachers fault if little Johnny (from a disciplined home*) does better than little Peter (from a home where ‘everything goes’ – regardless of reason)
• Loving your kids does not give parents license to allow them to become undisciplined little monsters with the expectation that ‘school will sort them out’.
• You have one, maybe 2 to contend with. School has 10-30 per class.
• If you don’t like what the school is doing, let them know! Most teachers are more than open to hear from parents. In fact, apart from the slightly overbearing or hysterical parents, they hear nothing or very little.

My understanding – without condoning – of this message

I was a teacher in a very good school for a few years before my twins were born. My students did very well, and I harboured and maintained the school’s sense of respect for both teachers and elders – neither of which our society conforms to today in general.

I did however work for a time, as part of my training, in a public school and the parents ritually:

• Lied for their children when the truth would have been hard, but helped them to avoid the consequences
• Excused their children from school, homework, gym, library etc. for entirely fallacious reasons – most thinking they were helping their children avoid a consequence they were responsible for, and should have answered.
• Defended their behaviour under unacceptable circumstances

In the public school realm, this is the norm in many (not all) instances – and I am sure my experience of England – and this experience of Australia – may not extend to the US and Canada? You tell me. Recent examples leap to mind including the burning of that 15 year old youngster, the rape of another young girl at a prom, and more…

It is not the teachers to blame entirely, nor the school system, but the parents. Ultimate obedience or disobedience, understanding of consequences and ability to integrate with society lies with the dad, mom and close family values and practice.

This answering message unfortunately lacks foresight, understanding of the full repercussions of such a statement, and is in itself offensive with no outlet to concerned parents to actually report a sick or absent child.

For the parents of this school, perhaps you need to go back and get a poll on how your parent body behaved to prompt this response, not cause it.

For the school, this type of response, while understood by staff, is inappropriate in its tone and entirely unacceptable to both students and parents alike. Students, like parents, will stand by their own and while the message was enlightening, it was alienating. I doubt that was your intent as a public school body, and yet I understand that the excuses, lies and misinformation are a hard-cross to bear.

Deal with it as best you can, but not by an abusive, uncaring voice-mail.  

It’s actually pretty easy…

1. Decide if hiring in-house for SEO + PPC or SEM combined is more feasible in terms of your spend than outsourcing.

I realize it depends on size and revenues… but as soon as you get to a point where you can hire inhouse, you chould. Using an agency initially may give you an idea of the power of SEM (SEO+PPC) assuming you get a decent agency. I recommend contacting Epiar or Clix Marketing in the first instance for SEO and PPC respectively. If their books are full, they will point you in the right direction (North America wide).

As with anything, you pay for what you get. If you want to look for your own agency for SEO or PPC, or combined services – I recommend:

• steering clear of combined unless they are pretty big with a decent size staff
• asking to see their current and past client list
• determining how they charge – if they really know their stuff, they will charge for performance, though most will ask for a % of PPC spend and/or will have a flat rate per page/per site (based on pages escalating) or per unit of SEO (keyword research/title tags/meta data etc) for SEO services. If anyone asks you for more than 10% of spend for PPC…reconsider – even that is pretty high, and again, it depends on the size of your account. The best way to go with SEO is via performance models. In which case you will need to give them your analytics data. MNDAs or simple NDAs are fine, most will have no problem signing. If anyone does – don’t sign…
• Clarify how often they will check your account and analytics, how they will report, and how often along with what tactical refinements they will make – and how often
• The key thing is to know what you want to achieve (realistically) and then shop around to see who can offer you the best bang for your buck – hinging on the BANG
• Go cheap and lose your $. Go with what sounds great but with unproven promises or undisclosed clients, and lose $ – pretty safe to say that. Play safe – especially with your PPC dollars…

2. Know which questions to ask

If you hire a consultant – pleas read this post, if you are hiring an agency, we’ve covered that with the above info and the post, and if you’re hiring in-house, I suggest the following along with a review of the type of questions asked in the post mentioned:

• Have a screening phone call first to find out if you think the person might be a fit for your business based on a predetermined set of questions based on your corporate culture, expectations and the personalities of your existing staff. It may sound a bit daft, but it will save you endless amounts of frustration and possible unnecessary quits during probation.
• Follow up prior to first face-to-face with an SEM based questionnaire – preferably about your own site asking for good points, bad points and top points to address for maximum impact within a time frame and/or budget.
• Face-to-face and decide.
• Offer what they are worth, and if you can’t afford them based on their worth, offer them bonus, shares etc to get them. Check out GlassDoor to get an idea of what people may expect. And don’t think cheap or new is better. If you really want to make a difference in the search engines results – you need a pro, or at least some significant experience with what makes SEO work, and what gives PPC a decent ROAS.

LMK if you have any questions, and good luck!

Follow me on Twitter, and come hear me speak at Pubcon!

·         “Hi, I’m curious about your work as a web marketing manager and wondered if you had any advice for someone just joining the online advertising sector re where/how to begin one’s job search? Where does such a path eventually lead? How much of the work is mathematical and how much creative (generally speaking)?.. [a bit more].”

Usually I don’t answer these types of contacts, especially from complete strangers, but for some reason this one made me think. I checked out the chap who asked it, and he’s one clever dude – totally out of the remit of internet marketing of any kind, but probably far more intelligent and business savvy than I could ever be. SO I decided to get back to him – with some minor changes and pictures added for fun here.

This is what I wrote, and I thought it would be of interest to folks who have ever been wondering the same thing.

“INTERESTING QUESTIONS! These are some quick thoughts…

1. Where does such a path eventually lead?

Depending on your level of experience and any qualifications you may have in marketing - creative agency project management, content or copywriting, analytics, web design and/or web development (in general) - the web marketing path can both open to you and lead you to a position of Online Marketing Director, Operations Director, Senior Project Manager, Senior Web Analyst, Usability Professional and higher to VP, COO, CMO etc..

As with any career it depends on ability, enthusiasm, dedication and – more than most – on flexibility and willingness to learn fast, adapt to change, and deal with multiple personality types.

2. How much of the work is mathematical and how much creative?

a. If you are more figures based, then getting into project management in a web based company may be a good bet based on any management training – this can lead to operations management if you fit the bill. Alternatively, getting deeper into coding and working with statistical information might open the door to development (code), search engine optimization (SEO) and/or web analytics.

b. if you are a creative, you can silo into design, online advertising (banner and email advertising), social networking or/and PPC (pay per click is the other half of SEM [search engine marketing, which = SEO + PPC + Analytics]

c. If you thrive on research and application, then you can go for usability, analytics, SEM, social or a combination thereof.

It’s a great industry with many applications, facets, opportunities and potential areas of specialization.

3. Where/how to begin one’s job search?

Based on the above (very brief and incomplete) intro, I would suggest you search job boards for positions that may interest you and read the job descriptions and requirements. I recommend checking out YourJobStop.com.

It remains a ‘relatively’ new field, but it is highly competitive and while there are few targeted degrees or qualifications, ability is more important and is easily and quickly seen. Enthusiasm is a must, and in most cases implementation/practical experience will count.

Some additional tid-bits:

1. The best way to really get some basic experience – if it’s totally new to you – is to set up a website, play with basic html and experiment with basic PPC, and SEO, and social while reading as much as you can about the area of the industry that interests you most. If you can add a web site to your CV, even if it’s just a personalized blog, that may help in some cases provided it is well conceived, designed, maintained and has good original content applicable to your new ‘area of interest’.

2. I’m not sure if it’s of interest to you, but I loved maths and statistics (quantitative methods), included both in my BCom., and the latter in my MBA. I love data and the ability to research and apply my learnings, while contributing to usability best practice – and I’m a relatively successful search marketer. Online advertising is a bit different as it targets purchasing flight times on advertiser sites (sometimes a year in advance) utilizing multimedia ads including Flash and driving to campaign dedicated pages that are marked for analytics – and much, much more than I can include in this supposedly short, quick answer.

Concluding thoughts

As with any form of marketing, online marketing (be it advertising or optimization) has the onus upon it to prove success. This is usually in the form of ROAS (return on ad spend), and there is a whole financial/analytical strategic discipline behind determining online marketing goals and their measurement for stake and shareholders. That’s where analytics becomes vital as the measurement tool, and where planning, negotiation, process, management and more raise their heads as vital disciplines.

The origin of marketing hasn’t changed – and we need to be the folks with the real deal, in the front and well ahead of the scammers…

The Whonk

I hope that helps to a certain extent. If I can help you with more specific information on anything that interests you, please let me know…

My very best to you, and God bless – Laura”

BUT! That’s not the end… I got a really nice reply that I’ll include here in part (not all of it due to the fact that some personal info was shared, and yes we are now buds. I think I may have the better end of that deal J)

·         Well Laura,

·         I think you must get a prize for one of the most informative messages! …[]

·         So strangely enough, your great knowledge on this subject steered me quite a bit away from it – in fact, back to   my original line of work, from which I had veered and wanted to explore ecommerce opportunities – from there online advertising had seemed a natural choice, and now I get the same queasy feeling that I did once I discovered what SQL entailed.

·         That was cool of you to advise me on this, I am certain that if this had been my calling, you would have set me in the right direction – you already did by showing that I’m probably better off elsewhere[]. Still glad to have talked and feel fortunate that we met here. []

·         Take care,

Thanks for reading! Please follow me on Twitter and we’d love it if you signed up to our feed for more unlikely gems and insights J…

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…

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SEO is Misunderstood

Background

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a term that was coined in July 1997, where it was used publicly in what was perceived to be a spam message, hardly an auspicious beginning. Over the years, the term ‘search engine optimization’ has become synonymous in the eyes of the general public with spamming techniques, and with the deliberate manipulation of the SERPs (search engine results pages) to reflect less than optimal results via ‘black-hat’  or spamdexing techniques.

Regardless, the SEO industry has grown and continues to grow as many marketers, web developers and planners have realized that SEO can legitimately - effectively and efficiently - assist their online brand exposure, sales and other marketing objectives.

So What is SEO?

It’s a multifaceted discipline and is the practice of the following 4 summary points, and more:

·         Understanding a website’s primary online objective and how that fits in with the businesses overarching marketing objective, which in turn should be supportive of the business model and corporate strategy. How? By understanding the client, and the economic and industry landscape at a bare minimum.

·         Conducting online competitive and market research on behalf of the client. This is not simply limited to keyword research; this is about understanding the search query language and intent of the online target market, their search patterns and behaviors, their demographics and personality types (grouped averages), how they interact with the web, where their sticky and stumbling points are (what your users like, and what they will leave) and much more.

·         Analyzing the client web site’s onpage elements in terms of the research findings and best practice SEO. The objective being to assess how usable and navigable the site is to human uses and spiders, as well as how well the site answers the interest and likely search behavior intent of the client’s target market.

This is analyzed in terms of onpage content relevance and includes a remit of other variables that require some nifty foot-work; there are usually some brand or legal requirements, some usability issues to contend with, friction with creatives and marketing, difficulties with CMS or other backend database limitations, unclear expectations, unreasonable goals, and on-and-on so the wheel turns.

·         Understanding the importance of effective backlinking strategy, integrated social media strategy and the ability to work effectively with public relations and social via innovative and best practice strategy to boost buzz in the blogosphere via the social networks. This in turn is all about creating or enhancing the Trust and PageRank of a site via efficient backlinking from trusted, related, authority resources.

The Challenge?

Personally, I’m really, really tired of the uninformed or the simply ignorantly arrogant stating with utter conviction that SEO is a ‘waste of time’ and that it is conducted only by ‘snake-oil salesmen’.

Actually, effective SEO is pretty hard work, it’s not that easy, and it is a big deal. In my books, SEO remains misunderstood by the masses and I’m fast turning into Ms. Cranky-Pants when it comes to answering these detractors.

SEO is Under-utilized

Background

Search engine optimization has never really had a home. SEOs float between being considered web developers, content writers and online marketers; a jack-of all trades but master-of-none apart from the mystical ability to ‘work’ the search engines.

So Where Should SEO be Aligned?

To be honest, it depends entirely on the seniority of the position and the requirements of the role – much as with most other jobs. But my summary take will consider an SEO lead/management position, and it is this; an SEO lead should be able to:

·         effectively project manage a team of SEM folks (both organics and PPC)

·         work hand in glove with IA, design, copy/content writers and development

·         understand as much as we know we can about search engine optimization without hands-on the actual algorithms themselves

·         have a good understanding of client/in-house brand integrity, design philosophy, content methodology and legal requirements

·         be able to hand code html and have a sound understanding of most web development techniques, and popular CMS and analytics programs

·         train best practice SEO based on discipline functions from a very high level down (that’s not as easy as it sounds)

·         work with other online and offline marketing leads to ensure that SEO is aware of – and if necessary included in –  all marketing initiatives to ensure that there are targeted pages created for tag-lines used in billboards or TV ads (e.g.)

·         ensure full integration with public relations to contribute to all online press releases as well as to have a heads-up on all offline releases to facilitate on-site answer and speak to targeted search query follow up

·         work with social, R&D and XD (experience design) when social and keyword research provides insights to new opportunities or threats, or identifies competitive strengths or weaknesses.

The Challenge?

Being an effective SEO manager or lead requires patience, dedication, tenacity, humility, credibility, diplomacy and so much more that that topic alone deserves a post of its own.

Hopefully I’ve covered some points worthy of highlighting here, but I’d love to hear what you have to say!

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Optimising web content for both human users and search engine spiders should not be a mutually exclusive endeavour; at its most basic content should be, and needs to be, optimised for:

1. human users – ensuring topical relevance, clarity and usability, and
2. spiders – ensuring topical relevance, ease of discovery and crawlability.

It is an undisputed fact that on the web, ‘content is king’. This adage applies to the importance both human users and spiders place on quality, relevance and quantity of ‘readable’ content on any given web page. Much as a human user does not look at an entire site at one glance, neither do search engine spiders view web sites in a single crawl. Spiders view, index and rank pages on an individual page-by-page basis.

The search engines are trying (and succeeding) in their quest to make their spiders more ‘human-like’ in their interpretation and understanding of web content. It is the search engines objective to present the most relevant results to human users in the search results in order to improve their own relevance – and usability – for their set of stakeholders. The best way to do this is to have spiders rank pages according to topical relevance in a manner most likely to answer a human search query intent; this requires an algorithm that ‘thinks’ as much like a human as possible.

It is not the objective of search engine optimization to spam the engines, to detract from usability, or to have final control over content. It is the objective of effective search optimization to complement online marketing initiatives, support web content and enhance usability, crawlability, clarity and topical relevance.

Two search optimization best practice components worth expanding on for the purpose of this post include;

1. Search query intent, and
2. Search query language.

When conducting keyword research, it is important to determine the search query language, as well as the search query intent of your online search-based target market.

·         Search Query Language refers to the actual phrase or keyword string human users physically type into the search box when conducting a search

·         Search Query Intent refers to what they are actually hoping to discover in the results returned

One of David Ogilvy’s quotations speaks very well to the idea of focusing on search query language and utilizing it in your web site to answer search query intent:

“If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language in which they think.”

A further quotation by John Ilhan identifies that in developing your offering, you need to answer the intent of your primary users, not provide them with information you think they might want:

“This may seem simple, but you need to give customers what they want, not what you think they want. And, if you do this, people will keep coming back.”

What is worth mentioning is that if search optimization of content is not effectively integrated into a comprehensive web content strategy, there will be negative impacts on all three of our stakeholders, and that impact is compounded over time.

Without effective search optimization. (Please click image. Sorry folks, it’s worth it – and yes that’s how I spell ‘behavioural’ – no hiding. Canada rocks!)

Conclusion?

Content is King, but optimised content is the King’s muse….

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Which forms of UGC to leverage, why, where and how can be a challenge to even the most professional marketing team.  Please read more about UGC and SEO here.

VOC (voice of customer) is another part of the same puzzle. Traditionally:

• “…[VOC] is a market research technique that produces a detailed set of customer wants and needs, organized into a hierarchical structure, and then prioritized in terms of relative importance and satisfaction with current alternatives.” Wikipedia

Usability Study

I was recently provided detailed information as part of a team knowledge sharing initiative on a usability study that one of my colleagues spear-headed across Canada and the UK.

It’s interesting that no matter how objective you try to be, once you have been working on a specific account for any period of time, you will be myopic on certain points, complacent on others and oblivious of yet more.

Some feedback from these studies that I can freely share include the following three general points:

1. Don’t ever assume that your online market is nearly as tech savvy or internet experienced as you or your team are. Issues with misunderstood navigation, unseen buttons, confusion on how to even begin to find the site from the engines were not uncommon, even though most issues identified seemed like total no-brainers to the more internet experienced internal team – even those not on the accounts in question – we’re not (in most cases) selling to our technical/internet peers. I’m not saying that our target markets are less intelligent, I’m saying that they don’t spend all day working in html, refining Google advanced searches, using Google and Yahoo operators, visiting numerous completely diverse sites for research, competitive intelligence or pure interest reasons.
2. Don’t assume that features and functionalities you think will be of great interest and benefit to the customer, actually are. Mistrust, uncertainty and the pure search and swap instinct is very prevalent. If you are offering something fancy or informative, make sure you provide them with full information on what they are getting, whether it be in the form of information during a download, or an explanation to the effect that the retailer testimonials they are seeing are not purely self-promotion (link to the original – that simple, but so often overlooked – heck, we know it’s real… right?).
3. Many usability victims… err, test subjects actually think that they are only expected to provide negative feedback. Make sure you ask them to tell you what’s positive. In some cases, it might be the opposite (less common) so ensure that you tell them you want feedback on both their positive and negative experiences and feelings. Try to get them to quantify all feedback via a simple scoring system including positive and negative scoring throughout to keep that top of mind.

What about UGC?

Well, let’s backtrack a little. This usability study was regarding test subjects’ experiences with the web site itself. Admittedly unless a site is particularly awful or particularly blindingly awesome, not too many people comment on the actual site usability of their own free will, and usability is pretty darn important if you’re involved in ecommerce.

BUT… what about conducting a usability test for an online application. I guarantee some of the feedback would be ‘great, fast and easy’ as well as ‘so slow’. Well sometimes, UGC is as effective if not MORE so than usability studies for gaining real time interaction and feedback from real customers as they are using your app/product/service. So what can you do?

1. track the social networks (Google alerts; Radian6; Twitter Search and more)
2. aggregate the feedback and see which comments on which features are the most prevalent (more ‘this is slow’ or more ‘this rocks with speed’)
3. respond to every positive and negative comment and follow up with PR and feedback where possible/required and take it offline if it gets too long, or too confusing – you have other followers
4. feed learnings back to product development and marketing on a regularly scheduled basis (don’t ping them with every tweet, post or comment; they’ll hunt you down and disconnect you)
5. blog about interactions with the socnet including after-the-fact product/app/service fixes based on feedback with a big thank you to all followers/commenter’s etc
6. link out of comments and twitter posts where possible and relevant to followers/readers to specific pages within your site encouraging readers to go to the site with a snippet of highly relevant info followed by an ellipsis ‘…’.
7. Never comment or tweet/forum etc spam. Just don’t do it.
8. get back to initial pure voluntary commentators/tweet peeps when you have a usability study or other research factor on a feature or function as a potential add to your test target market – it’s predefined and you already have an in… awesome J

Why bother with UGC when we have VOC?

• It is likely that when you really impress someone on the socnets (social networks) with customer service, you may well turn them into a fan as opposed to a neutral or a potential/real detractor.
• It is possible that you will generate a ready made contributor base for future usability studies
• It is possible that your socnet folks are UGC addicts themselves with their own blogs, and if you engage them effectively, they may very well blog about your product, your site, or your twitter account/blog/forum etc. All exposure in the socnets that is positive is a good thing, weither indirectly or directly for SEO – both in terms of pure backlinks, but also in terms of SERP real estate and exposure… this is the minefield of the longtail, if you can harness it effectively. Referral traffic is very likely to spike if you make this work, so don’t keep your SEO analytics figures (if you use GA for example) limited to actual organic/non-paid traffic; after a socnet initiative go in and measure before and after referral traffic along with the long tail of referral sites… you may be very pleasantly surprised. I did that today for an SEO post mortem one of our sites – over a 200% increase in referral traffic over a specified period of time. (You can monitor Twitter backlinks currently with BackTweets – one of my faves).
• MOST importantly, if you have free VOC in the socnets, track it, harness it and use it as real time, real people studies of how your real customers feel about your offering (product/service/app etc) in real time. It’s the best kind of VOC out there from a purely qualitative point of view if you record and feed it back accurately and appropriately. It may not be quantitative, but you can assign values to comments (positive and negative) and thus determine a mean value as well as outliers and other statistically significant data to provide some form of non-qualitative data to your stakeholders. Make sure you explain your methodology, but don’t blind them with your process.

Conclusion

UGC and VOC are part of the same puzzle – they’re just on different sides of the board. Don’t lose one, or you may scupper the other.

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