February 2008 Archives

Now that social media has broken through to become part of mainstream marketing, reputation management is critical for companies large and small. Solid advice on reputation management from Jeffrey Smith.

From New Marketing to Basic Marketing ... Jake Matthews applies the 4 P's - Product, Price, Place Promotion - to online marketing.

Stoney deGeyter explains how to successful SEO campaign.

Jon Miller offers lots of detail on two ways to save money on  your landing page.

Lists are a dime a dozen on the Web, but this list of more than 100 Useful Web Resources for Small Business and Non Profits puts most of them to shame!

Want to go global? It's not impossible these days. Shannon Bowden put together this enlightening overview of multi-national search marketing strategies.

Another great list - this one from Junta42 on the topic of content marketing. It describes and shows examples of 42 ways to convey your message on the Web.

With all the attention on social media,  we shouldn't forget  the important role still played by paid search. Dave Naylor explains why PPC should be part of your long term strategy.

The lists keep getting shorter, but no less valuable. This one, from Esteban Panzera, offers 9 Tips for Planning a Social Media Marketing Campaign.

When is the last time you updated your Web site? If it's been a while, you may be leading with your chin with your online presence. Jennifer Slegg put together this nice self diagnostic tool - How stale and dated is your website? This is one test you'll want to take.

It is easy to assume that search engine optimization and almost all things internet may not be right for your small business. But would that be true? How important is it for you that your potential customers find you?

According to Piper Jaffray (2007) Local search is the second most popular online activity after e-mail and even more significant is that 60% of all local business searches now happen online (33% happen in print yellow pages) and 82% of the people using local search sites follow up their research with offline action. (TMP Directional Marketing-comScore, August 2007)  Using myself as an example, I don't think that I've actually found services, or goods without consulting the internet in years - from my landscaper, to my snow removal service, to babysitting and even restaurant reservations - all "local" in nature, all done online. Web sites now cater to my need to find someone reliable with customer reviews, star ratings, and verification systems that ensure that I can almost trust their listing as much as hearing it from "word of mouth."

So how does this whole thing relate to you as a small business owner?

Matt McGee has his take on this in his post What I love about doing SEO for Small Businesses 

Small businesses are often more personally invested in SEO. A 25% increase in traffic, or a 10% increase in conversions will often have a much more dramatic impact on a small business's bottom line, maybe even its survival, than it would on a multi-million dollar corporation.

What this means is that as a small business, your SEO investment may reap bigger rewards in the long run, since small steps in the right direction will enable you to reach a population of your potential customers that you were not able to reach in the past.

Matt Cutts an engineer from Google explains the process in Website Designers Want Searches to Work for Free (USA Today) 

It's the same thing any small business would do to get started," says Matt Cutts... who writes about the ins and outs of getting noticed by Google on his mattcutts.com/blog. "You would drop fliers all over town. Online it's the same thing. Trying to get links is letting people know about you and what you're doing."

First thing that needs to be done is to assess your capacity for venturing into optimizing your web presence, versus your day to day business needs - in Internet Can Make a Big Impact on Small Business
Evelyn Lee makes this point -

Once a cutting-edge option, Web sites have become a staple in the world of small businesses. Some local entrepreneurs say that having an Internet presence allows them to stay competitive, provide information and market their products and services to potential customers far and wide. At the same time, a lack of time, staff and technical skills can make it challenging for many small businesses to run Web sites.

SEO does get some negative press due to misinformation, Mark Johnson in his post Don't Waste Money on a So-Called SEO Specialist  confronts American Express and their OPEN book article that suggests that SEO is a waste of money for small business owners - he has this to say to doubters-

IT ABSOLUTELY DOES WORK! If you don't believe it, do a Google search for "credit cards" and see who shows up in the natural results. Not AMEX. Not Mastercard/Visa. Not Discover Card. Not ONE of the major companies (well, Bank of America shows #9 for me). Search Engine Optimization is the great equalizer and the small business owner's friend."

In many ways it does come down to this point-- the internet is a great equalizer, sites like YouTube have proven that even nobodys can become somebodys with one home run home made video. In turn, a small business (with the right tools and know-how) has a unique chance to be seen and heard like never before to an ever-widening audience/potential market.

Once upon a time in the village of Sparkle, there lived a struggling dry cleaner named Ed. Although Ed was the most gifted dry cleaner in all the village, his mix of Yellow Page advertising and direct mail was not generating walk in traffic like it did in the '00's.

At dinner one evening, his wife, Edwina, asked him, "Tell me, dear husband, why are you so sad?"

Ed replied, "My business is failing, dear wife. My mix of Yellow Page advertising and direct mail is no longer working. Soon I will be forced to shutter my doors. I fear you shall never have the commercial-grade espresso machine you always dreamed of."

"Have you considered Google AdMaps?" Edwina suggested quietly.

Ed wrinkled his brow. "What is Google AdMaps?"

"It is a new way to harness the power of local search, dear husband."

"Is it ... expensive?"

Edwina smiled. "Less than the cost of a single direct mail piece."

"Then let us consider it, Edwina! May I have another slice of cheesecake?"

Several days later, Pamela Pennington and her three children, Peter, Paul, and Priscilla Pennington, were piled inside the family's hydrogen powered SUV running errands. While waiting at the bank drive through, Pamela thought, "Perhaps today I will find a dry cleaner for my tablecloth. Perhaps today I will find the One."

Pamela pulled up the GPS screen on her PDA phone and displayed the coordinates of all the dry cleaners in Sparkle. Three of them were tagged as offering specials.

The first dry cleaner was offering 10% off shirts brought in that afternoon. "This is not the One," thought Pamela.

The second dry cleaner was offering a free alteration with purchases over $25. "This is not the One," thought Pamela.

The third dry cleaner was offering a money-back guarantee on hard-to-remove stains."This might be the One!" thought Pamela. She clicked through the ad to the Seller Profile and saw that the dry cleaner specialized in difficult jobs.

Pamela completed her transaction at the bank window and said, "Peter, Paul, Priscilla!  Buckle your seat belts. We are off to see Ed the dry cleaner!"

"Mommy, Mommy! Could he be the One?" asked Priscilla.

"We'll see," said Pamela.

"How can I help you, fair lady?" Ed asked as Pamela entered the store with Peter, Paul, and Priscilla.

"I saw your ad on my phone," she replied. "Behold ... THE TABLECLOTH!"

Ed gasped.

"Will your money-back guarantee cover this? Notice that the pure white fabric has all but disappeared beneath a salad dressing stain from Peter, a spaghetti sauce stain from Paul, and a grape juice stain from Priscilla. In all the land, I have never found a dry cleaner willing to touch it."

"Fear not, madam. Doing battle with the gods of grime is my stock and trade. I will make your tablecloth like new. I will remove the salad dressing stain from Peter, the spaghetti sauce stain from Paul, and the grape juice stain from Priscilla."

"Ed, if you are able to do what you say, I shall make you the most famous dry cleaner in all of Sparkle."

Ed bowed. "I put myself humbly in your hands, madam. You can pick the thing up tomorrow afternoon."

As the weeks passed, Ed noticed more and more new customers trickling into his shop. Before long it seemed as though every citizen of Sparkle wanted his services. He hired two more assistants and began plans to expand his facility.

"Dear wife, it is a miracle! Suddenly we are up to our foreheads in polyester, cotton, and even gabardine. I cannot explain it. Do you think it has something to do with Google AdMaps?"

"Perhaps," Edwina replied. "Have you asked any of the new customers why they came to your shop?"

Ed wrinkled his brow. "No! But that is an excellent idea!"

In time Ed did ask customers why they began to seek him out. He discovered that Pamela Pennington was a high authority contributor to Sparkle's largest shopping Web site and blog. After Ed had magically returned her tablecloth to its original state, Pamela posted a positive review on the blog, which attracted thousands of unique page views and hundreds of comments. More positive reviews and comments began cropping up on other local commerce sites, blogs, and social networks. Because of the heavy volume of  the keyword phrase "ed's dry cleaning", Google AdMaps indexed Ed higher and higher and bestowed upon him larger ads and more favorable placements. In time, no citizen of Sparkle could talk or search dry cleaning without bumping into Ed.

The interactive combination of paid search and social networking proved to be a recipe far more delightful than Yellow Page ads and direct mail. In the years that followed, Ed opened franchises throughout the land and enjoyed life, sitting by the fireside with Edwina sipping espresso from her commercial-grade espresso machine.

The End

"Black Hat" is a term used to describe search engine optimization strategies that employ tactics that are bordering on, or are unethical. According to Wendy Boswell in Black Hat Search Engine Optimization black hat SEO techniques usually include one or more of the following characteristics:

• Breaks search engine rules and regulations
• Creates a poor user experience directly because of the black hat SEO techniques utilized on the Web site
• Unethically presents content in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and search engine users.
  

Matt Cutts in Gadgets, Google, and SEO  had this to say about companies that use black hat SEO --

I think the search engine optimization industry has made a lot of progress in the last few years. It's a little less common to get cold calls from SEOs that guarantee #1 rankings but won't tell you how they try to do it. And if a large SEO company wants to try something high-risk with a client, they're more likely to explain the potential risks to that client first. There are still issues, of course, but I was looking over a list of 20+ blackhat SEO companies that I compiled back in 2002. The majority either went out of business or have transformed into white-hat SEO companies.
For a while now, I've had a slight hunch that clients that embrace blackhat SEO on their site are willing to cut corners in other areas of business as well. Earlier today I was reviewing an email from 2001 (!) where Google removed a very large company's website from our index for hidden GIF links, machine-generated doorway pages, and cloaking. It's interesting to look back with the benefit of hindsight now. Later on, the company:
- had 10+ employees convicted for inflating revenue
- the CEO was sentenced to 10+ years in jail
- another executive was sentenced to 2+ years in jail

Forbes had an extensive article on black hat SEO called The Saboteurs Of Search,  where Andy Greenberg, described one popular tactic called "Google Bowling".

Search marketers claim they can frame certain competitors as cheaters by posting thousands of links around the Web, making a competing site look like it's engaging in "link spamming," a tactic that draws the disfavor of major search engines. In SEO circles, this technique of setting up a competitor to be punished for link spamming is sometimes called "Google bowling."

What can a targeted business do if it's competitors use black hat SEO? Terri Wells tackles this in Defending Against Black Hat and Negative SEO Tactics 

Diane Aull came up with five possible approaches, based on how one would deal with a schoolyard bully. There is no telling which approach - if any - would be successful. Her suggestions would probably work best when dealing with someone who is not targeting your site with negative SEO, but rather engaging in black hat SEO to increase his or her own site's ranking in the SERPs, thus driving yours down. You might want to consider combining several tactics for the best chance of ameliorating the problem.

• First, you can ignore what is happening ...
  
• Second, you could take up negative SEO yourself ...
  
• Third, you could report the offender to Google ...
  
• Fourth, you could avoid the bully ...
  
• Fifth, you could work at becoming popular ...
  

There is still some controversy around what a black hat practitioner is truly capable of doing and how effective it is in destroying search rankings for targeted sites. Nevertheless, it never hurts to understand what you can of the "dark underbelly" of search, especially given the rapidly growing competitive online business environment.

Large or small, companies can benefit from having a business blog. Mack Collier describes how several companies increased sales dramatically as a result of blogging.

Press releases, as I've mentioned many times, are an effective way to communicate with the market and build credibility. Here, however, Jennifer Mattern explains How Too Many Press Releases Can Damage Your Credibility.

Jeffrey Smith offers sound SEO advice on Using RSS Feeds & Content for Building Links.

Looking at content management systems for your new Web site? Confused by all the options with their various SEO bells and whistles? This really nifty flow chart from Randfish will help you figure out which CMS platform to use.

A detailed post from Doshdosh explores a couple ways to improve conversions for your Web site. As you will see, how you present information on your site makes all the difference.

Jordon Kasteler packs a lot of information about Universal Search into his brief overview post.

Your About Us page is a  key component of your Web site. Bill Slawski provides thoughtful reflections and advice on how to make the About Us page rock and roll.

If you're looking for more conversions - and who isn't? - Ann Smarty explains How to Call to Action, including a fascinating discussion of colors, an important and often overlooked nuance of Web site design.

Paul Gillin's recent book, The New Influencers, is a must read for journalists, as well as public relations and marketing professionals. In it, he describes how social media is transforming the ways in which marketers engage with the market. For folks who have grown up in the Internet era, much of what Paul explains may be common knowledge. However, for people accustomed to old-style "command-and-control" marketing and traditional media etiquette, the book will be quite a revelation.

Today, effective marketing means interaction and even collaboration between sellers and buyers. Today, positive user reviews carry more weight than slick corporate advertising. Today, "blog swarms" may move the market faster and more drastically than a story in the New York Times.  Marketers need to be aware of these trends. Otherwise, they will be apt to spend too much marketing money in the wrong places and not enough in the right ones.

Gillin correctly points out that many of these new developments are in reality taking us back to an earlier time, when the world was smaller and people were more connected. Blogs, podcasts, and social networking sites are more like town squares than 30 Rock; bloggers and podcasters are more like Revolutionary-era pamphleteers than talking heads on the network news.

A career journalist, Gillin acknowledges there will always be a place for traditional media and marketing. What's important is to understand that the dynamics of persuasion are changing. With change comes challenge. The challenge for marketers is to continue refining traditional approaches while at the same time diving into the chaotic new world of social networks.