April 2007 Archives

If you’re currently reading up on search engine optimization processes, you'll quickly notice that the Web is teeming with warnings and advice. Yet with so much SEO expertise literally at one's fingertips, why are so many people doing it wrong?

Information overload may itself be part of the problem. Technology feels like a high-speed train passing right in front of our eyes--easy to spot, hard to keep up with. Some companies develop their SEO strategy based on outdated information. Others opt for the latest and greatest innovation, but forget about the SEO fundamentals. Still others, overwhelmed by options, end up throwing darts.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you maneuver through your plans for search engine optimization:

Watch your timing. At what point are you in your Web development process? In a perfect world, SEO should be integral to your marketing from the beginning, as opposed to being an afterthought. Although it is never too late to incorporate SEO, setting it up in the beginning may save you considerable time and money in the long run.

Content is king. Your content is not only what keeps your visitors reading, it is also what gets them there in the first place. Having clear focus on what you want to say (keyword phrases) help your customers understand what you do and it also helps search engines pick you out from the rest.

Know the search engine’s guidelines. Breaking--or even bending-- the rules may sometimes mean being banned from the search engine. At the same time, understanding the guidelines will give you some clue as to how to best build your site for optimum results.

For further reading--

VBSEO summarizes the most common SEO errors.

Design-related mistakes from Shari Thurow at ClickZ.

Big brands can err too, notes Randfish from SEOmoz.

Question--As a B2B company, how many of your customers do you think do their purchasing research online?

Answer--Just about all of them.

Profitimo reports that a study of 1500 respondents showed that 93.2% of buyers do their purchase-related research online, with 95.5% saying they would begin their online research by using a search engine.

According to a study of business Internet users, search engines were the number one destination followed by manufacturers’ Web sites. Yet despite this, according to a recent Forrester report only 59% of B2B companies surveyed do search engine marketing. For more insight, read this analysis from Search Engine Land.

B2B firms are noticing these powerful customer trends and spending more aggressively on search engine marketing.

So how do companies usually slice their search engine marketing pie? According to SEMPO’s 2006 report on the state of search marketing, organic search engine optimization tops the list, followed by paid placement. Advertisers who responded to the survey stated that they used search engine marketing first to promote their brand, with driving sales a close second.

In his book Confessions of an Advertising Man, advertising legend David Ogilvy reveals the secret to making sales--

"...What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form. Your most important job is to decide what you are going to say about your product, what benefit you are going to promise."

Ogilvy wrote this in 1963, when creating persuasive ads for print and television was no walk in the park. Yet today, thanks to the World Wide Web, developing effective content has become even harder. Not only must you find the right words, you must optimize your words for the all-powerful search engines. When it comes to your Web site, your sales message is useless, no matter how well written, if customers never see it.

For searchers to find you, your Web content must incorporate the right keyword phrases. Keyword phrases are the words people use when using search engines to find your products or services.

Selecting the right keywords is an art and a science. Some phrases are used by searchers more than others. Some phrases are used by certain types of searchers but not others. The placement of keywords and the frequency of their appearance are also factors that affect the search engine ranking of a particular Web page.

Many analytical tools are available to help you select and position keywords, as PJ Fusco explains in this ClickZ post. As she points out, keyword optimization is not a one-time shot, it's an ongoing process of review and refinement. The more you learn about customer behavior (i.e., the keyword phrases they actually use to find your page) and page performance (e.g., conversions, unique visitors), the better you can craft your sales, marketing, or branding message.

And yet, content development cannot be reduced completely to science. A Web page can include all the right keywords in all the right places and still be unreadable.

In Ogilvy's day, the challenge was to craft a persuasive message. Today, the challenge is to craft a persuasive message while confining yourself to a specific number of specific phrases. That is why optimized content is more expensive--and worth every penny.

Pay only for ads that get results? What a novel idea! In reality, not a totally new concept, but something that search behemoth Google has finally decided to deliver upon. Google’s new pay-per-action advertising system allows advertisers to pay only for ads that fulfill a predetermined action on the part of the consumer, be it a sale, a lead, subscription to a newsletter, etc. In short, you decide what you want the ad to compel the user to do and only pay for ads that actually do so. The new system went live for testing on March 20th , and is only available to US advertisers for now.

What this means to you—

Reduced risk. You don’t get charged for online ads that don’t produce the results you’ve defined.

Greater control over your budget. Google allows you to set predetermined costs for each action that your customer takes, based on what value that action has to your business

Open to all (or most) advertising “wallets”. There is no minimum spending requirement to take advantage of this system.

Targeted reach. If you are a very localized or area/specific business, Google is able to set your ads to appear only for people searching in your particular area.

Further reading--

More details straight from Google’s AdWord’s Product Manager- Rob Kniaz.

Andy Beal on Google's new program.

There seems to be an endless amount of opinion, tips, and “expert” analysis on how to best implement a search engine optimization strategy. Where do you start and why bother?

Bottom line is that a business that invests in search engine marketing should research and review to make sure that their efforts are maximizing returns.

How do you do this?

One approach is to go through a checklist of SEO basic questions to make sure all your t’s are crossed. (PJ Fusco has a good list of 20 questions to ask yourself based on best in class benchmarking.)

Another approach is to survey your own backyard-- talking to your front line sales folks or customer service people, and asking “What are the common terms used when people call?.” Some business owners make the mistake of assuming that they already know the keywords used by their customers, but oftentimes that mental picture may be wrong or incomplete.

In the long run, SEO is the process of defining your search marketing goals and understanding your customers well enough to accomplish them.

For more information, see--

SEO basics from TimUkag.com.

Definitions of SEO terms from The People's Media Company.

Backlinks, or links from other Web sites back to your own, improve your site's search engine ranking. A backlink tells the search engine your site is notable and quotable, and therefore important.

For SEO purposes, the most powerful backlinks are those that come from high traffic Web sites. Building your backlinks might take time, but it's worth the effort. Here are a few backlink-building suggestions.

1. Add a "News" section to your site. If you have real news about your company or industry, report it. Other industry Web sites and business news sites are always thirsty for fresh content. You can also submit your article to online article banks, where it might be picked up by any number of industry Web sites or blogs. This strategy works especially well if you have a well-defined market niche.

2. Ask for backlinks in all the right places. Your chamber of commerce, trade associations, strategic alliance partners, suppliers, and customers might well be interested in linking to you--but you have to ask. Besides improving your SEO, a backlink discussion with your business partners might lead to fruitful conversation on many fronts.

3. Add a blog! Because blogs are such a popular and interactive information exchange medium, they can attract quality backlinks faster and more effectively than most traditional Web sites. Blogs have a number of other extremely favorable SEO characteristics as well--it pays to consider blogging opportunities.

One strategy we do not recommend is certain types of "linkbaiting", by which we mean employing gimmicky techniques to attract high numbers of backlinks. First, the technique can backfire because search engines are getting better at detecting non-substantive links. Second, such links, when discovered by potential customers, may lower your credibility. Third, the ultimate value of backlinks is to attract qualified site traffic. The best places to attract it from is quality sites read by your potential customers.

For more information--

Eric Ward reports on Google Custom Search Engines and backlinks.

In-depth analysis from Yaro Starak on the importance of backlinks.