Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

Six Lessons from a Wooden Boy: Lesson Three: Don't be a Social Media Jackass

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:51:29 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

There's just something about the anonymity of sitting behind a computer screen that makes people do stupid things. Few but the boldest sales person would walk into a class reunion and try to close a sale with the alumni at their table, even fewer would walk up to a stranger's table at a restaurant to start shilling their offerings. Nonetheless this very thing happens every single day in the realm of social media. People walk smack dab into the middle of conversations and start hocking their wares without a second thought.

That brings me to the third lesson in this series: Don't be a social media jackass.

In this six part series, I'll be exploring six valuable lessons you can learn from the classic story of Pinocchio and offering up some input on how to apply it to your own marketing plans. If you are just joining the series, catch up on past articles:

Six Lessons from a Wooden Boy: Part One: Search Engines Want to be Real Boys
Six Lessons from a Wooden Boy: Part Two: Online Reputation Means Straight Talk

Life Has Rules and So Does Social Media

In the story of Pinocchio, the wooden boy eventually finds his way to Pleasure Island and makes friends with a boy named Lampwick. On Pleasure Island, little boys break all the normal rules of society. They drink, they smoke, they swear and they gamble. Of course there's a price for these actions; over time, the boys gradually turn into donkeys. It's not until Lampwick transforms into a donkey and Pinocchio sprouts a donkey tail and ears that he makes the choice to leave the island with Jiminy Cricket.

The world of social media really isn't so different. Social media has rules of engagement just like society. In fact, the rules of social media very carefully mimic the rules of real life interactions. Social Media users are expected to be polite, to listen more than they talk, to offer more than they take and to generally, behave themselves in an upright, pleasant and professional manner.

Unfortunately, one too many businesses takes a look at the perceived party atmosphere and dives in head first without giving second thought to the consequences of their actions. They hear about how many companies are increasing profits via social media and they run in with both guns blazing and no second thought to how to engage their audience. They throw the rules of society out the window and focus on doing what they think will most benefit them.

Like Pinocchio and Lampwick in a land without rules, they often end up making asses of themselves.

Find Your Balance

While doing business in the land of social media really isn't that different from doing business anywhere else, the stakes can be a little higher. Make a bad impression by pushing too hard at a Chamber of Commerce meeting and you're likely only going to offend a few local business owners. Do it on Twitter or LinkedIn and the ripple effect could extend around your industry and around the world.

That said, there are four simple things you can focus on that will help you navigate the sometimes choppy social media waters.

1. Listen: Make Sure You Don't Dominate the Conversation

The absolute biggest, most unbreakable rule of social media is to listen. If you do absolutely nothing else in social media, it should be this. Why? Because the biggest value in social media is the insight you can gain from getting to know your customers.

You can listen to your target audience talk about your company, your competitors and even just about the problems they face in every day life and the solutions they've found for them. You can ask questions and listen to the feedback. You can ask for ideas and suggestions.

You'll notice how often the world listen got used in this section...there's a reason for that. Listen. Listen two to three times more than you talk. It will pay off, I promise.

2. Connect: Make New Friends and Keep the Old

The second biggest benefit to building a social media presence is your ability to connect with people. Social media can provide an avenue to build a stronger relationship with the casual acquaintances you already have in the industry and the social side of it can help you daisy chain those relationships to get introductions to other people you might like to connect with as well.

Listening in to the conversation is great (and highly useful) but it's not until you begin interacting and building relationships that you really start reaping the full reward.

Of course the key points there are "connecting" and "building relationships." You can't simply hone in on a few people and start talking at them, you need to find the people who have similar interests and begin finding ways to build those friendships and business relationships. Doing that takes time and taking the time to do it the right way "protects" you from accidentally breaking the rules and looking like a common fool.

3. Add Value: Find Unique and Genuine Ways to Help

Once you've taken the time to listen to the conversation and find ways to begin building relationships, the next step is to add value. Social media is about the collective sharing and spreading and development of knowledge. It's about building resources and becoming resources.

Like many other areas of life, the people who work the hardest to help others often reap the greatest rewards. Those who spend time lazing around and leeching off of others enjoy brief moments of success before finding themselves in a heap of trouble, often doing more work than they needed to in the first place. (Much like the boys who turned into donkeys and were hauled off to work the salt mines in Pinocchio.)

By the time you've reached point three, you really should have spent enough time listening and building relationships to have some idea of what your online community needs. Sit down and figure out how to meet those needs and you'll start building the type of reputation that builds your bottom line.

4. Measure: Know What You Want to Get from the Experience

Finally, you need to have some idea of what you are looking to get from the experience. There's no sense investing your time in social media without some type of goal. Keep in mind, your goal doesn't have to be sales related...it may be as simple as establishing at least one new industry contact a week or building a network you can gather feedback from for future product launches.

Whatever your goal is, make sure you identity if before you begin building your social media strategy. Your goals will heavily influence the strategy you put together and finding ways to track your results will hold you accountable for the time you are investing.

Up Next

Pinocchio may have found it fun to hang out on Pleasure Island soaking up bad living and doing whatever he pleased...but it didn't take long before he began to see the consequences of those actions. Life in social media is similar. Spend too much time ignoring the "rules" of society and you'll end up looking like a jackass.

In the next lesson in the series, we'll take a look at what Jiminy Cricket has to do with online marketing.

Images courtesy of creative commons license from Flickr users Carbon NYC, Eric Schipul, Ed Yourdon and Aussiegall.

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SEO Pricing: 5 Things to Consider When Shopping for a SEO

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:17:09 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Choosing a SEO to manage your website marketing has never been easy, but during these tough economic times it's more important than ever to choose wisely. No one wants to be the guy at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, who chose the wrong chalice. You're site will be nothing but a shell of it's old self with the Knights of SEO standing over you saying, "He chose... poorly." Uh, yeah... "Information that would have been helpful yesterday!" (to mix my movie quotes.)

If you're a small business shopping around for the right SEO to help you out, there are a lot of things you need to consider before jumping in and hiring a SEO subcontractor or firm. Even if you're on a tighter-than-normal budget--and really, who isn't right about now--you can't shop for SEO simply on costs alone. That's like buying an economy car when you really need a mini-van. You just need to find the mini-van that offers the best features at the right price.

Not all SEO providers are the same and not all sites require the same type of SEO service. All thing must be taken into proper consideration. Here are five things that are relevant to the overall pricing and success of your optimization campaign.

Size of your site

The size of your site will be a significant factor in how much work will be necessary to optimize. The smaller the site the easier the overall optimization will be. But if you're dealing with a site with lots of pages or products then the optimization becomes much more complex. Even the pre-optimization work on larger site's is more time consuming.

The difference between optimizing small and larger sites can literally be thousands of dollars per month. As you start shopping around and getting quotes for SEO, you need to be aware of the size of the task that you're being quoted on.

Condition of site

While size of the site has an effect, so does the site's overall condition. I've run across many smaller sites that were so completely screwed up that nothing short of a complete re-development was in order. This sucks for the small business owner, but when you didn't invest in developing the site properly the first time, it means you either have to do it again correctly or simply suffer through ineffective SEO. Of course, you're still paying for that SEO so you're better off going for the re-development.

If your site is in relatively stable condition, from an architectural standpoint, then that will cut down the cost significantly. This is especially true for larger site's where one change can be implemented across thousands of pages instantly.

There are a lot of factors that are considered when looking at the site's condition. Things such as the architecture, usability, design appeal, usage and customization of title and description tags, page content, site navigation and internal linkage, all need to be considered when analyzing the condition of the site and what needs to be done to get it into proper order..

Keyword options

There is a huge difference in optimizing a site for a few dozen keywords, versus optimizing a site for several thousand. There are many sites in niche industries where keywords are pretty limited. Usually we can still come up with a list of a few hundred, but sometimes it's even fewer than that. But in other industries the keyword variables are wide open and there can literally be an unlimited number of keywords that can be targeted.

The more keyword options there are for your site, and how quickly you want to get any and all of those keywords optimized and performing in the search results, will be a contributing factor in the cost of your campaign. If you are fine with a slower approach then costs can be reduced significantly. But if you want to be more aggressive, optimizing more keywords more quickly, then the cost will go up significantly.

Experience/Skill of SEO

Some SEOs charge $25/hour while others charge several hundred, and there is every shade in between. Not all SEO firms charge by the hour, but the quote for services is based on the number of hours of work estimated and how much the SEO believes they are worth for that amount of time, so essentially, everything is hourly based.

While you may not want to pay $200/hour for services when you can get it for $50, there is a skill factor involved in each pricing structure. Not everybody who charges a lot is worth it, but very few are worth more than they charge. Selecting a SEO with the skill level necessary to do the job and do it effectively is essential to your long-term success. Keep in mind, also, that more skilled SEOs will not only charge more per hour, but they will likely get more done in less time. At the same time, they are more likely to find and fix problems that would be left unaddressed by the lesser skilled providers.

Another factor to consider is the difference between hiring a solo-SEO consultant and a SEO firm. While firms tend to have more overhead that needs to be paid for, they often have a wider skill range to work from. It's often difficult for one person to be an expert in SEO, architecture, copywriting, usability, link building, and social media all at the same time. In such cases these jobs will often be farmed out at a profit for both individuals/companies doing and managing the work, or simply performed less effectively.

Services offered

The amount of services offered in a SEO contract can vary from company to company. It's not too difficult to reduce costs of the SEO service by cutting out non-essential services. But frequently enough, essential services are cut as well, in order to get costs down. Cutting costs by cutting essential services is bad for everybody. Not only will you not be performing but then you'll blame the SEO who will in turn point out that you may need to purchase additional services in order to perform.

While not every service is necessary for every kind of SEO contract, you need to make sure that the essential services are in place. And from there, you still need to keep an open mind if other services may need to be added to give your campaign an added boost.

All of these factors weigh heavily in the overall cost of any SEO and online marketing campaign. If your funds are limited then you may be tempted to go with a budget SEO provider. But keep in mind that SEO is an investment. If you invest little, you'll likely get little. But as you increase your investment then your return usually becomes exponentially greater.

Everybody needs to budget and you don't want to get into a contract that you simply cannot afford to pay. Considering each of the areas above carefully will ensure you're selecting an SEO provider that will provide you the best service, giving you the most value for your invested dollar. The last thing you want is to be budgeted out of success.

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Can I Create a Great PPC Program For You?

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:05:59 -0600

by Diana Adams

We regularly get email something similar to this:

I'm just one guy running my business. I want a great PPC program and I heard you can cater to someone like me. Can you help me?

I typically respond to questions like this very carefully because there isn't a simple yes/no answer. I don't want to provide false hope because yes, I do create great PPC programs, but much of the success is going to depend heavily on the website. Let's look at a few things relevant to the campaigns first.

What constitutes a "great" PPC program?

When evaluating the effectiveness of a PPC campaign / ad group, I tend to look at these three elements:

CTR How many clicks per impressions. The higher the click through rate, the more relevant your ad is to the searched phrase
Cost per Conversion Cost divided by number of conversions. The lower the cost per conversion, the higher the ROI
Conversion Rate How many conversions per click. The higher the conversion rate, the better your ROI is going to be.

The first element, CTR, is something that as the PPC manager I have direct control over. It is determined by relevant keywords and corresponding ad text. Through thorough keyword research I can create extensive keyword lists. Lists that are relevant to the landing page and are the terms people use when searching for the product/service advertised.

I can create relevant ads matched to the keywords. I know how to use calls to action in my ads. Taking a relevant keyword list, adding it to a relevant add text, we get a strong CTR.

What I can't control, when hired strictly for PPC management, is what happens after the searcher clicks the ad. A strong CTR doesn't mean anything if you've paid for the click and get nothing in return. It is the conversion rate, and ultimately the cost per conversion that matter most. Those elements are dependent on the landing page experience.

The landing page experience.

What happens when the searcher lands on your site? Unless the goal of your campaign is strictly to drive traffic to your site, once the searcher is on the landing page, it's up to the page to capture the conversion. No matter how many people land on the site, a good percentage of them need to follow through and purchase, or complete a contact form. What are the important on page elements you need to consider in efforts to have a successful PPC experience?

content/copy: does your content use the same terminology as the majority of the core keywords in your ads and ad groups? Having quality content that incorporates the keywords in your ad group and ad text, goes back to the quality of the ad group as a whole, and reduces the cost per click.
relevance: is it obvious to the visitor, as soon as they arrive on your site/page, that you offer what they're looking for? This ties in with the content/copy from above. If they searched for sports massage therapy, and your ad said you provide that service, does the landing page support that?
call to action: is it equally obvious to the visitor what it is that you want them to do next? Sure, they're going to want to be able to read/skim some of your page, but is there a clear call to action, such as contact us for more information, or add to cart. Don't make them hunt.

In getting back to the original question "Can I create a successful PPC program," the bottom line answer comes down to how you answer my question: Do your landing pages support success? If your landing page can't answer YES to each of the above questions, don't waste any money on PPC until it does.

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Puppy's Picks - January 5th, 2009

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:36:15 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don't have to. From a great year end compliation of posts to simple reminders of the need to focus on the basics, find out which articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

Beth Harte has put together a great list of things to look for in a social media marketing consultant. It was spawned by her earlier post on the Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert is a Carpetbagger and does a great job of shining some light on what companies should look for when entering this brave new world of marketing.

Karon Thackston has a post offering a great reminder of the need to look beyond your optimization and toward the conversion abilities of your site and your copy. Karon offers up an example site and shows how they've gone completely overboard in their use of keywords and destroyed the site's ability to convert. She also points out the site's complete lack of rankings for the phrases in question, making the sacrifice on the conversion potential side even more frustrating.

One of the biggest challenge I have in dealing with small businesses and social media marketing is the journey to convince them of SMM's value without letting them go overboard. Anyone who has spent time engaged with social media knows it can be addicting. I have to work to keep myself in check on getting too excited about things, so it comes as no surprise those new to it find it difficult to establish balance as well. David Armano had a great post over at Logic + Emotion on New Year's Day that poignantly explains the process of companies coming into the social media space. Here's hoping the new year will be rife with companies who quickly move from "new convent" to "evolving true believer."

If you're a fan of year end "best of" style complications, you won't want to miss Tamar Weinberg's "Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2008" list over at Techipedia. From search to social media to blogging to the major social media networks and platforms, Tamar segments out some of the most useful and insightful posts from last year. Even if you don't plan on reading them all, this is a great one to bookmark

Paid Search campaigns are one of the biggest offenders in online marketing in terms of wasted dollars rushing out the door. Common mistakes and misperceptions can cost a company tons of money and mismanaged campaigns often lead companies to pull the plug on what could have been an excellent profit center. Brian Carter tears down five common myths about Google AdWords in a post over at Search Engine Journal today. If you're advertising via paid per click now or plan to in the future, it's a must read.

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It's Not Just About Twitter... and How I Bought a Kodak Camera.

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:40:04 -0600

by Paul Jahn

So, Twitter happens to be huge right now. There are a ton of articles, Blog posts, and even PDF books on how to use it correctly for different industries. I don't think there's one definitive answer on how to use Twitter, although I can safely say it's important to not forget about other social media options. The whole mix is what can build consumer relationships.

Around nine months ago, I started a Blog project at work that had me looking for different office supply manufacturers who utilize social media options such as Blogs, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

I wound up finding Kodak. Only a small part of their product lines involve office supplies, and that's fine. I even wound up buying a Kodak camera because of it (more on that below).

They do have a few Twitter accounts, including one for Kodak's Chief Blogger, Jenny Cisney at http://twitter.com/kodakCB. This is great, but they also utilize other forms of social media. They have their own YouTube channel which they consistently keep up to date. Their public Facebook page is equally as active. Since Kodak sells cameras, it also makes sense that they would have a Flickr photostream.

Jenny also runs a Kodak blog and I was in awe of a panoramic shot from a post at the Beijing Olympics. I commented, and she commented back mentioning that their M1063 has panoramic options. I thought that was cool and connected with her on Twitter and Flickr. Add their YouTube channel and Facebook page and these social media avenues combined helped me purchase the Kodak M1063. Other manufacturers had what I was looking for too, but the interactivity from Kodak gave me personal trust.

I'm only one person and the camera only cost $150, but it's money I probably would have otherwise spent with either Nikon or Canon. It turns out that the purchased camera works great for my needs.

From a consumer point of view, this is a great example on how to utilize many social media opportunities. For SEO, all of the above social media options are crawled by Google. A lot of search engine real estate can be achieved here.

As a consumer, have you made buying decisions based on social media? We'd love to hear your story!

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Six Lessons from a Wooden Boy: Part Two: Online Reputation Means Straight Talk

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:21:37 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

For as long as there have been web sites, people have posted their thoughts, opinions and rants about people and companies and for as long as there have been search engines, consumers have found and read those thoughts. While it's been several years since companies began to realize the value of tracking and managing their reputations online, the explosion of social media has made online reputation management more complex and necessary than it's ever been before.

Why Online Reputation Management Matters

Let's think about why the things people say about you online matter. Back in 2005, I wrote a post called "Online Reputation Management, Are You Doing It?" In that post, I explained it like this:

Imagine that you've just left a business meeting with a potential client. You've pitched your services, impressed them with your portfolio and given them a competitive pricing bid. You've all but sealed the deal and are confident that with a follow-up call, you'll have them signing the paperwork and faxing the contract over to your office.

Now imagine that you are the client. After a great meeting and a proposal that sounds great, you decide to run a quick search online for the company that just pitched you. You run their name through Google or Yahoo! and there, just under the company's web site is a link to a message board. You click the link and find a posting by a disgruntled customer that claims to have had a bad experience with the company you are considering hiring. Is that search result going to taint your opinion of the company you were ready to sign a contract with? Chances are high that it will.

Of course these days it's never as simple as one web page with one opinions. No...these days what we find are blog posts with long strings of comments, or daisy chained blog posts that refer to the original complaint and pile new complaints on top. We see these posts getting picked up and tossed around social media services like Twitter and Facebook and we see companies rise and fall in hours as the social media hordes decide whether to worship or vilify the company of the moment.

For Better or for Worse...

Sometimes, managing your online reputation is about slowing down or stopping negative momentum before it reaches the mainstream press. The makers of painkiller Motrin learned this lesson just last month after posting a fairly controversial ad aimed at baby-wearing mothers.

You can get a great recap of what happened from Laura Fitton, including a video with the compiled Twitter posts on the topic. The impact, though short lived, was huge. Jeremiah Owyang breaks down the numbers on his blog.

Granted, the story did get picked up by the New York Times parenting blog and by USA Today and both of those results now show in the top ten for a search on "Motrin" but the results could have been far worse.

Of course the impact of positive talk about your company can be just as strong. I've written in the past about the I Heart Zappos blog post and the impact a single post by a single person had on spreading the word and increasing good will about an online company.

So Where Does Pinocchio Fit In?

So at this point you're thinking "that's nice Jen, but what does Pinocchio have to do with all this?" Well, let's consider Pinocchio and that fast growing tree branch of a nose he had. When Pinocchio told a lie, his nose grew longer. The more lies he told, the bigger (and more obvious) his nose (and the lies) became.

That's a valuable lesson for companies looking to be involved in the conversation online because one of the single most important qualities any company needs to succeed online is honesty. Whether it's being transparent about who you are and what your motivations are when contacting bloggers or owning up to the mistakes you've made and doing your best to correct them, honesty will get a company further in social media than just about any other tactic out there.

Tell a lie, misrepresent reality or fail to address legitimate concerns and the problem will grow as noticeable and become as much of a nuisance as Pinocchio's nose.

People Are Savvy

Consumers are becoming more and more savvy these days. They have the resources to research almost anything they want to and they have legions of other consumers to gather input and opinions from. Self appointed watch dogs can bring a company to its knees. On the other hand, self appointed evangelists can send a company soaring.

Look at Dell and Walmart and how each company has handled themselves online. While Dell started off shakily, their turn-around is one of the most well documented social media success stories on the history of the web. Why? Because they understood the value of being credible, authentic and consistent. On the other hand, brands like Walmart have failed to find social media success time and time again because they continue to rely on self-centered, manufactured messages that are inconsistent and ultimately prove the company to be untrustworthy.

In the next installment in the series we'll take a look at the realm of social media and why Pinocchio's experience of growing a donkey tail and ears can teach you a valuable lesson.

Flick creative commons license photo credit: Llawliet

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I'm a Google Convert But I Still Want to See Competition in Search

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:35:34 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Over the last few months I've become a convert to Google. I've always used Google as my primary search engine but only recently have I started using a few other Google products such as Gmail, calendar and documents. I'm a fan.

But when it comes to search, I'm fed up with Google's dominance. We could use a little competition in search.

Of course, it's really not Google's fault that they run between 50-70% market share, depending on who you ask. It's really the fault of all of us searchers. We use Google because we like the results. We don't use Yahoo or MSN because for whatever reason we feel the results are inferior.

Google got to where it is because it earned it. None of the other engines seem to be able to dent that and are losing market share to Google each month. However, I'd be surprised if anybody would notice if Google's results were swapped with MSN's for a week. Psychologically I feel that I'll get better results from Google, but I don't know if its true or not because I really don't use any other engine frequently enough. Heck, even using Google I often don't find what I'm looking for anyway.

While each engine has to do it's part to find ways to produce better search results, what makes any search engine competitive is the user. As long as users don't feel the need to switch to Yahoo or MSN, Google will always dominate. I have some problems with that as a searcher and as a business that makes a living by being found in the search results.

Cons of having one dominant search engine

Rankings in other engines mean little in terms of traffic.
Losing positions in the dominant engine can create a noticeable drop in traffic.
Competition for top positions can be extremely fierce lowing the ROI of the investment of achieving such rankings.
Algorithm changes on one engine, causing loss of top rankings, can devastate a business.

Pro's of having multiple dominant search engines

Multiple engines create additional opportunities for site branding in search results as searchers move from one engine to the next.
Searchers have more opportunities to find quality sites, if each engine produces differing results.
Many businesses will focus on one or two engines only creating more availability and less competition for top positions, and therefore increasing the ROI value.
Ranking losses one engine will be far less noticeable when a multi-engine strategy is employed.

Of course there are also drawbacks to having multiple competitive engines as well:

Optimization for many engines can be more difficult than a single engine, though competition will be more spread out.

It'll be unlikely that one site will dominate the top spots of all competitive engines. This can be a pro for you against fierce competition, but a con if you are the fierce competition.

A top ranking on a single search engine will produce less traffic and revenue overall. This means a multi-engine strategy will need to be employed OR that your site must be the Destination Website for your industry.

Personally, I believe that the more competing search engines there are, the better we'll all be. But because Google is so entrenched as the dominant engine its going to take more than another engine simply being as good as Google. I think that some of other engines have surpassed Google in some key areas, such as user experience, quality of results, result segmentation, but none have beat Google in all areas simultaneously. And it's not been enough to attract an growing audience. It'll come down to the average searcher to start using other engines for their web searches.

If you're a searcher, you have to ask yourself if you really do get superior results from Google or if you just think you do. Even if you do, are the results on the other engines that much inferior that you can't find what you want?

If you're a business owner you need to think about what you can do to increase your competitive arena. If you already achieved top spots in Google or not, start to transfer some market share to Yahoo or MSN and soon others will follow. And as they do you are opening up new opportunities to compete and drive traffic to your site.

This next year I'm replacing Google as my default search engine. I may use MSN or Yahoo or perhaps both, depending on the circumstances. If I go to Google it'll only as a last resort, if the other engines don't give me what I'm looking for. I'm willing to bet that will happen far less than I suspect. Not only that it will show me that there is life beyond Google. And maybe, just maybe, we can start seeing some competition in search start to happen.

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Six Lessons from a Wooden Boy: Part One: Search Engines Want to be Real Boys

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:06:07 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

It's been more than two and a half years since I first wrote about the "Pinocchio Effect" as a way to explain the ever changing nature of search engine algorithms. Earlier this month, while preparing for the new small business panel at SES Chicago, I read through that old article and realized just how many areas of the Pinocchio story can be applied to online marketing.

In this six part series, I'll be exploring six valuable lessons you can learn from the classic story of Pinocchio and offering up some input on how to apply it to your own marketing plans.

Today's post sets the stage with an updated take on my original article: "Search Engine Algorithms: Understanding the Pinocchio Effect." Here's how I described it back then:

You see, deep down, search engines want nothing more than to be real boys (or girls). That's right, it's that simple. As search engine engineers gain more and more ability to tailor the algorithms, their ultimate goal is to help the search engines make choices the way that people do.

Succinctly put: Search engines seek to replicate human judgement with their algorithm. Every change they make aims to help them judge a site the way a human would judge a site.

The original post was inspired by questions that kept popping up during the Q&A of some sessions at a past SES New York show. At the time I wrote:

People would ask what keyword density they needed to focus on, or how many words they should use in their Title tag. Well-meaning attendees would ask for the magic number of links to get per week or how to know exactly when to request an incoming link instead of a reciprocal link. In other words, everyone wanted to know the magic formula that would guarantee them great results.

The problem with this line of questioning is that there is no magic formula. Each and every time these questions were asked, the panelists would carefully try to explain that while there may have been magic numbers in the past, those days are behind us now. That's not really the answer that attendees want to hear, but the reality is that search marketers need to find a new way to explain the concepts of algorithms to their customers, one that takes the focus away from math.

For the most part, I'm seeing these types of questions fade away at search conferences. That said, they're now being replaced with new questions that follow the same patterns. People want to know how many links they need to get a good ranking. They want to know which social media sites carry extra "weight" to help them rank better. They want to know if blogs are the magic tool to rocket their rankings. They're still ultimately looking for a magic formula, even if they know the ingredients in the formula have changed.

Why Chasing Down the Algorithm Simply Leaves You Exhausted

Of course that leads to another problem...the problem with SEO formulas. While it's true search engine algorithms are essentially complex "formulas" it's not generally feasible to focus on reverse-engineering them so you can determine exactly what changes to make to your site. Engines like Google rely on literally hundreds of factors in determining ranking and no one but their engineering team truly knows how each of those factors are weighted. While it's true there are some individuals and companies out there who are fairly well known for their ability to test and determine new algorithm factors, this method of optimization simply isn't practical for 95% of the companies looking to increase their rankings.

For the rest of us, this type of optimization is known as "al go-chasing." You'll often see it on discussion forums as one person announces the results of a "test" they've run and legions of other rush off to make edits to their web sites to reflect this new information. Unfortunately, algo-chasing generally results in a lot of work with very little pay off. Stoney deGeyter wrote a great advice post on this several years ago called "Common Sense Algorithm Chasing."

Applying Common Sense

Let's go back to our simple definition of the Pinocchio Effect and see it in action. If search engines are looking to replicate human judgement, it means we can match up the changes in the algorithm with a better understanding of how humans value a web site. This is probably most clear through the progression of how engines like Google have valued links.

Back when Google first blasted on the scene with some of the best search results any engine had delivered, it was their reliance on links that made them special. Google had figured out that linking was the online equivalent of a vote of confidence. With that in mind, the algorithmic adjustments went a little something like this...

1.) Link Quantity - Originally, search engines were most concerned with the number of links pointing to a site. They viewed each link as a vote of confidence and made the natural assumption sites with more links were of higher quality. (Unfortunately, it didn't take long for site owners to figure this out and to start finding ways to build new links on their own.)

2.) Link Text - As site owners began actively seeking links, search engines realized they needed to improve this area of the algorithm to give them a better idea of just how valuable a link was. A natural progression was to read and consider the anchor text (the blue, underlined text a user clicks on to link to a new page) and to factor that text into the algorithms. It made sense that if a site had a million incoming links using the word "pizza" the site those links were pointing to was probably about pizza. (Once again, it didn't take long for site owners to figure this out and to begin seeking specific link text.)

3.) Link Quality - As site owners once again began to catch up with the algorithm, the search engines moved on to the next stage. This time around they not only looked at the number of links and the text describing those links, they looked at the quality of the site the link was coming from. By using their first two link judgements, they could easily tell if the site giving the link was popular (lots of links) and related (topical words and anchor text). It was natural to assign more weight to the links coming from respected, related sites. (Any surprises here? Site owners catch up and start seeking these types of links.)

4.) Link Age - As site owners began creating better link building campaigns, the engines needed to create better ways of judging those links. The next step for the engines was to put value on the age of a link. After all, a site that has had quality links pointing to it for years is a sure sign of an established and trusted site. At the same time, a very recent link could be a great way to tap a site as having good coverage on breaking news or a hot new topic. As such, the engines began adding the age of a link to their equations. (and once again, site owners took notice and started working on this strategy, often by buying established domains with incoming links to build new businesses on.)

5.) Link Buys - Eventually, seeking out quality links from quality sites in a world where everyone else is doing the same became fairly difficult. While still doable, many businesses turned to purchasing links as a faster way to control and build the links coming into their sites. The engines, always seeking to replicate human judgement, decided a purchased link was not worth as much as an "earned" or freely given link. As such, they've spent the last year or two working on ways to combat paid links and threatening to harm the rankings of sites who either buy or sell links.

Applying the Pinocchio Effect

What's next in this progression? Any number of possibilities exist. Overall though, the path becomes clear. Each and every adjustment made to the algorithms is designed to better judge a site the way a human being does. Ultimately, the sites that are built in a search engine friendly manner and designed to benefit users tend to come out ahead. It's essential to understand search engine friendly design techniques and to learn how to find out which keywords to target. Once you get the basics down, it's really about focusing on your customer and giving them the best experience possible.

In the next article in this series, I'll take a look at how Pinocchio's rapidly growing nose teaches us a valuable lesson about online reputation management.

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Compound Return on Social Media Marketing

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:12:35 -0600

by Eric Brown

The Great Debate; What is the ROI (Return on Investment) on your Social Media Marketing. Perhaps a better question is this; Are your Social Media Marketing efforts performing. I am not so convinced that businesses know as much about what piece and part of their traditional marketing approach works well, let alone what part of Social Media works. But, maybe, as with lots of things it isn't all that complicated either, tell me what you think about this;

Collateral Material
Our small business, like most, require certain types of marketing material that we term as collateral material. We were running low at some properties (we have a boutique apartment property management business) on our marketing materials that we hand out to prospects when they come in looking for an apartment. It was time for some fresh changes, and we really wanted to introduce photos of real people in our models to invoke the prospects emotions, and add some fun and sense of community, as opposed to just highlighting the various apartment features. We hired a third party firm to photograph live models, in one of our furnished apartments, with the intent on shooting scenes of folks gathering about and enjoying themselves. The photo shoot turned out really well and cost us $3,500. We had the new collateral material made for that property and it looked pretty cool. Just having people in the photos makes a significant difference, we were pretty happy.

Tap Your Customer
I am not afraid to experiment with things, and neither should you be. The more I experiment with Social Media Marketing, the more ways we are coming up with to involve our customers, in our case our residents and to Engage their Emotions. There are lots of Social Media Carpetbaggers out there, beware. Try things yourself, get comfortable with navigating around. Anyone who proclaims to be a Social Media Expert likely isn't, we are all experimenting, but I digress.

The live models/people in the pictures looked great, but $3,500 for one property is more than we can afford or want to spend. Time to get creative, so I posted on the various sites we have active and regular conversation with our residents such as facebook, MySpace and Twitter, the following; "Urbane Residents, Need a little jingle, let us photo your furnished apartment and receive $500 big ones, let us photo your apartment with YOU in it and we give you a month of Rent Free!"

Compound Social Media ROI
So here is what unfolded, we had four residents sign up; all four wanted to be in the photos and brought in their friends. It was a complete hoot and everyone had a blast. We hired another one of our residents who is a very good professional photographer. He did the shoots for hardly a song and he captured some outstanding photos, not with just people, but with actual residents, who wanted to participate, wanted to be part of our promotional material and wanted to be Urbane Evangelists. We distributed the pictures to the participating residents and their friends.

Compound Returns
Here is the math; we were able to shoot four properties for a little less than $3,200 of net cost. So, that is pretty easy to see the increased return, we got four times the product for less money, and better, more natural footage. And, we were paying our residents as opposed to an outside vendor, I have to believe that our retention factor increases too. But the most fascinating piece is this; we created four more Urbane Evangelists, who each brought several friends to the shoot. Those four residents and their friends are emailing their friends, with our marketing collateral, because they want to show off their apartment. What is the value of that my ROI tracking friends, it is priceless.

These stratigies will work for you too, try them and experiment!

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Can a Broken Sitemap Hurt You?

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:40:43 -0600

by Mike Moran

Image via Wikipedia

I got an e-mail recently from someone very concerned that his product catalog does not have links to every page on his site from his sitemap, although he has a complete link structure emanating from his home page. Should he beat his programmer about the face and body until he creates a proper sitemap?

Seems like we've been getting a lot of questions on sitemaps recently, and I'll try to cover different ground than Diane Aull covered recently.

Diane talked about whether it's a problem if you're missing a sitemap (and the bigger problem in getting scammed to create one), but my reader had a different question. He has an old sitemap out there that contains 40 or so links, but his catalog now has 60,000 pages. Will this screw everything up?

First off, a sitemap is not required for search engines to crawl your site. If your pages are designed properly, Google and friends will happily add your pages to their indexes.

But what about a sitemap that's plain wrong, like this one? What happens then?

There's an easy way to figure out if you've got a problem. Check to see if your pages are indexed. If those catalog pages are already being indexed, then you have nothing to be concerned about, so just delete the sitemap from you server and don't give it another thought.

But do you know how to tell if your pages are indexed? You need to check each search engine separately, which you can do with the site: operator. Search for "site:yourdomain.com" and you'll see all the pages indexed. If you have 60,000 pages, like my buddy, the best you can do is spot-check with this method by using the site: operator naming specific pages in different parts of your site.

For Yahoo!, there's a better method, Yahoo! Site Explorer. Like the site: operator, you can see how many pages are indexed, but you can also export up to 1000 pages to an external file for more analysis. By working your way through the search engines' results lists, you can see which pages are indexed and which are not.

So, rather than becoming fixated with sitemaps, keep your eye on the ball. Test to see if your pages are indexed in each of the search engines you are targeting. If you have pages missing, there are many things you can do to fix the problem--that's when you start considering a sitemap.

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Don't Rush Into Social Media

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:24:24 -0600

by Mack Collier

Social Media continues to be the pretty girl at the ball that everyone wants to go dancin' with. But even IF your business can benefit from using social media, make sure you ease into these waters slowly.

More than ever, I am hearing from, and stories of, companies that are asking to 'get us started with social media'. The obvious response is 'well how do you know that you should be using social media?' Which usually leads to the inevitable 'because everyone is talking about it!' response.

Figure out what everyone is talking about for yourself. Start NOW familiarizing yourself with these tools. Start reading blogs, here's a selection of some of the top social media and blogging blogs. Read Jennifer's amazing tutorial on getting started with Twitter. Poke (get it?) around on Facebook and see how the members use the site. Use Google Blog Search to get an idea what bloggers are currently saying about your business, and industry.

The point is, don't think that social media is something that you need to immediately rush into. As a social media consultant, I do indeed believe you should begin to familiarize yourself with these sites and tools, and begin to understand how customers are using them. But do so at your own pace. If you can only invest 15 mins a day in reading blogs or scanning Twitter, go with that. As you start using Twitter, you might decide that your customers aren't there, and that you don't get enough value from using the service to stay. Or you may discover that Facebook has dozens of active groups devoted to your industry, where customers are already discussing you and your competitors.

The key is to start learning. The wonderful thing about social media is that it gives everyone, even businesses, the chance to find and share their voice. I would much rather have you start using social media because you love the space and understand its potential, rather than thinking you 'have' to.

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Share Your Content with Tell-A-Friend

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:36:52 -0600

by Manoj Jasra

I love the new blog widget by SocialTwist called Tell-A-Friend. It's a pretty slick way for my readers to share content via email, instant messenger, social networks and bookmarks.

SocialTwist supports numerous platforms, so the implementation was pretty simple - it even worked for Classic Blogger (which is what I use on my personal blog).

The Tell-a-Friend service works in most blogging platforms and popular Content Management Systems (CMS). Currently supported platforms are: Wordpress engine, Wordpress.com (free accounts as well), Blogger/Blogspot, TextPattern, JRoller, TypePad, Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla, Pligg, Mambo, and OSCommerce.

Here are the different methods you can share with your readers:

Email: GMail, Yahoo! Mail, MSN/Windows Live Mail, Type Email Address.
IM: Y! Messenger, GTalk, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, AIM.
Blogs: WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, MovableType, Xanga, Expression Engine, Joomla, Drupal, Textpattern
Social: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Indenti.ca, FriendFeed, MySpace
Bookmarks: Del.icio.us, Digg, Slashdot, Technorati, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Yahoo! Buzz, Google, Blinklist, Facebook, Newsvine, Furl, MySpace, LinkedIn, Propeller

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Beginner's Guide to SEO: Quickie Dos and Don'ts

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:54:43 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Many SEO newbies, or new businesses starting out online, come to SEO blogs such as this looking for some quick and easy solution that will vault them to the top in the results. Unfortunately, there are very few hard and fast rules in SEO, and no step by step solutions that, if implemented, guarantees you top search engine rankings. If there were, then it would quickly become obsolete because everybody would be doing it.

Instead, SEO is more of a set of guidelines that can be implemented in a way that allows for individual site customization. Most of it is fluid based on each site's needs for their audience. However within that there are also some basic dos and don'ts that need to be adhered to.

SEO Dos:

Customize your title tags. Each page should have a title unique to that page alone.
Research your keywords thoroughly. You really cannot start optimizing until you have researched out your keywords and know how the optimization will play out.
Use keyword relevant filenames for each web page. If the page is about women's brown boots then your file name should be womens-brown-boots.xxx. Such as: yourdoman.com/womens-brown-boots.html.
Organize your directory structure. Don't throw all your pages into the root folder and don't use too many directories/sub directories. Keep it simple yet organized.
Plan out your internal links. Develop your navigation effectively, implement no follows sparingly, link content to other pages liberally and use absolute links.
Use content effectively. Make sure your content does the job of selling to your visitors but is also keyword rich. Don't go overboard on keyword usage, but only as it functions best for the visitors.

SEO Don'ts:

Don't junk up your code. Get rid of junk code such as on-page styles, JavaScripts and excessive tables. Keep your code lean and clean and validate if at all possible.

Don't add a bunch of junk links to the bottom of your pages. Footer links are great, but don't just add junk links to pages that serve no value to your visitors strictly for the SEO benefit.

Don't settle for stock content. Take the time to develop custom content for your site. Don't use manufacture descriptions unless you add your own descriptive content as well.

Don't junk up your URLs. Keep your URLs clean and tidy without a lot of excess variables or session IDs.

These are just a few decent starting points for beginners in what they should and should not do with their site pages. Implementing these few tips won't suddenly shoot your site to the top of the search results, but it can begin the process of making your site much more search engine friendly and in a better place to be noticed by the engines.

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