Conference Buddies

SMX Advanced – Seattle, WA – June 2008
Topic:  Website Architecture Issues – SEO Tips

Here are a couple useful commands and tools for SEO:

This is  a useful command to find all your website pages that are indexed in Yahoo and Google:  site:insert-website-name-here.com

You type this command in the search field in either Yahoo or Google. This is great to see before a website redesign, in order to do your 301 redirects properly.  90% of website redesigns end up in a significant loss in traffic due to the lack of due diligence and planning.   Having a snap shot of what pages you have indexed, their meta tags, and keyword ranking is definitely useful and should be on the all web designer’s check list, as well as on every SEO manager’s check list. 

Use the Firefox Developer plugin tool to disable JavaScript to see what the search engine crawlers see.   You can download it here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

Finally a good Google page rank tool for Firefox:
http://googlebar.mozdev.org/

I never heard of this tool.   This tool helps you check if the redirects are the ones you actually want (i.e. 301, 302, etc.).   In which case for SEO you want 301 redirects to tell the search engines that you have permanently move this page with the page rank and score intact.  Google will not transfer score for anything other than 301 redirects.  Check out this tool the next time you do your SEO QA:
http://web-sniffer.net/

Here are a couple other tools from Google not mentioned in this session, but is very useful for Webmasters:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Persona’s help you identify who your audience is.  It’s also considered a way of profiling. Power to create deep empathy with your customers.

David Ogilvy once said, ”All good marketing requires empathy”
 

Key Points:
- Personality, wants, fears motivations, aspirations, etc.
- Speak directly to your audience   (Exactly what they need)
- Narrative  = description (demogr, psycho graphics, business) to get closer
- Empathy / Insight

Process:

1.     Research
2.     Brainstorm 
3.     Write it down 
4.     Create your campaign
5.     Segment your audience
6.     Measure, adjust, repeat

Research:
1. Demographics
    Geo, Gender, Income, etc.

2. Pschographics
    Personality, likes/dislikes, ambitions

What’s that one thing that will stop the purchase?

Resources:

1.     Quantcast.com
2.     Compete.com
3.     Adlab.msn.com
4.     Prizm / Claritas.com (expensive, data based on zip code)
5.     Trellian Keyword Discover
6.     Word tracker
7.     Google Suggest
8.     Adwords
9.     People (Trainers, Sales Team, Customers (Surveys))

Avoid like the plague:

1.  The CEO Data Source
2.  Stereotypes
3.  Quest for Perfection
4.  The perfect Ad is the one that never launches
5.  The perfect Persona is the one that you never use
6. Thesauritis (Easy words / easy to read / not too long)
7. CEO-it-is  (I know my customers syndrome, therefore I don’t need to ask)

                                             
Other sites to visit:
ConversationMarketing.com/Personas
PraticalPersonas.com
GrokDotcom.com

Decision Making Landscape (Low to High):

 i.      Emotion
ii.      Knowledge
iii.     Risk (loss)
iv.     Reward (gain)

Define and Understand Objectives

We’re more alike than different (Standard behaviors)

Channel Capacity:

Short Term Memory = temporary memory i.e. white board
1.     Limitation  = channel capacity (i.e. too many listings, users can’t click on everything)
2.     Limited to 4 to 5 things / 4 to 5 listings on average in which a user will click on
3.     On average all users will at least click on 1 organic listing
4.     First 5 seconds (on average the attention spam before a user clicks on a listing)

Long Term Memory  (Journal putting away for long time)

1.     Heuristic vs. Otimal Decision Criteria
2.     Heuristic (meet or surpass cutoff)
3.     Bounded rationality
4.     Sati-slicing 
5.     Misc

Find what meets general criteria
Narrow down then detailed rationality
     i.e. find key dealerships then drill down for best price of those 3 to 5 (and not price 100 dealers)

Model:

1.     Awareness
2.     Satisficing
              a.     Cut down to fit mental white board
3.     ComparisonMatrix
              a.     Now more rational
4.     Head to Heads
             a.     Sub Concious / Concious

5.     Focusing on Information Scent
         i.     Understand intent
        ii.     What is your objective
       iii.     Information Scent / Focus / Clustered in logical area
g.     Navigating with Scent & Images
h.     Men vs. Women        
         i.     Women use both side of brain (use 2x as much as men when in search)
        ii.     Search Engine made for Men
i.      Misc
        i.     Usage Case

Overall, Personas are fictitious personalities that we give to different type of imaginary customers, in which we do our best to understand each type of customer segment (by demographic, lifestyle, shopping behaviors, etc.), in order to tailor our marketing messages to each specific niche or segment.   This in turn helps identify, find, and communicate to customers that are within the target market of our products or services to lessen wasted advertising spending and focus on a more effective ways to acquire customers and grow sales.

The world of online advertising and paid search (also known as pay per click – PPC) has change over the last several years.   However within the last year, the rules have changed dramatically, and we now are officially in Adwords 2.0.

From the beginnings of GoTo.com with a pure bid for placement, the highest bidder wins the higher Ad link placement.   I still remember the days of 1 cent Ad placements with 10 cents buying you some top listings.   This is a far cry from today’s rising PPC costs with top rankings ranging from $5 to $50+ a click.  Can we say “mesothelioma lawyer”?

Now Google has raised the bar in making it difficult to not only rank higher in the natural or free listings, but now (actually in 2007, but more noticeable and advanced in 2008) Google has created advanced algorithms or formulas on how you will be ranked in the paid search / sponsored listings (or Pay Per Click, PPC).   This new way of ranking you (Also known as Ad Rank), not based on the highest bid, but rather a set of factors is known as Quality Score.

According to the SMX Advanced session on Dectrypting Quality Score, these following factors are key:

How:
I.   Minimum Bid
II.  Keyword Relevance (Within your Ad and Landing Page)
III. Click Through Rate (CTR)
IV. History

Note: What gets me is CTR or Click Through Rate is essentially making Google more money by ranking the company with the most paid clicks higher.   However in Google’s defense I can also see this lowering Click Fraud due to the fact you wouldn’t want your competitor to rank higher therefore stop clicking on them.   I guess Google wins either way.
Why is Google doing this?

Google is doing this to discourage spam Ads as well as keyword arbitrage.  Where by tens of thousands of individuals buy up keywords just to drive traffic to their spam related related website to make money while not having an actual product or service to sell. 

Note:  Okay, this makes sense, but it makes it extremely difficult to key up in the best rankings within PPC.   It takes constant effort to stay profitable even for companies with great products to sell.

Other Factors:

Within Keyword relevance you can get even more granular by breaking up your keyword campaigns within these areas:

- Narrow Your Keywords (2-3 word phrase matches) 
- Hand Build your Ads (Do not automate)
- Tailor Your Landing Pages to Match Your Keywords 
- Targeting by Geography Helps
- Segment & Microtarget (organized by focused and targeted Ad Groups and Campaigns)

Testing & Metrics:
- Track CTR & CR for all Ad copy variants
- Isolate variables
- Track to $ sales
- Experiment with different grouping structures
- Homgenize Ad groups
- Exact matches count
- Use day parting 

One of the main take aways within this area is that there is a new “Sandbox” theory not just for SEO but now for PPC.   Within that initial period of time you are being graded for QS or Quality Score which dictates your Ad Rank.    However what’s not clear still, is how long will you be in that PPC “Sandbox” i.e. how many clicks will it take for you to grow your QS and Ad Rank score.

One last thing as a main take away is to be focused in your organization of your keywords and Ads, as well as the quality of your website (i.e. relevancy) is key to your success as well.   

Search Marketing Expo – SMX West
Santa Clara, California
February 10-12, 2008
At the Santa Clara Convention Center

A great conference to attend for Search Engine Marketers.   SMX is a new chain of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) conferences started by Danny Sullivan, the original personality behind the first chain of SEM conferences, Search Engine Strategies (SES).   The difference between SMX and SES is that SES has been geared more toward the beginner in many areas, while SMX is tackling more cutting edge topics.

For more informaiton about SMX visit their website:
http://searchmarketingexpo.com/
http://searchmarketingexpo.com/west/