Free SEO Evaluation White Paper (coming soon)

Look for the Atlantic BT SEO White Paper soon. Today’s post shares SEO Tips prompted by a customer who successfully made SEO low hanging fruit changes and is looking to move his web site to the next level.

SEO – Martin’s Tips Note

SEO is a many layered challenge with touch points in site design, site reputation, viral campaigns, PPC (as a traffic generator and source of content research), hosting (site speed is becoming an increasing issue), meta data (particularly page titles), keyword aligned body copy and about fifty other things. We’ve seen tremendous SEO change in the last two years due to the growing influence of social networks. Diving into the middle of such a many layered challenge takes skill, time and a solid understanding of your site and business goals. Here are “best practices” you can implement in your site today to improve organic traffic:

• Facebook Likes (macro and micro) – Be sure to have the Facebook LIKE button on your home page and on important individual pages such as product pages or key articles AND make sure your counters are accurate to the page the LIKE button is on. I want a macro “reach” counter capable of summarizing LIKES across multiple touch points, but no such tool exists yet (that I am aware of) so make sure your Facebook counters are aligned to pages they are on.

• Platforms Beat Websites – read my Internet Marketing – Platforms vs. Websites post on ScentTrail Marketing to understand how significantly Internet marketing is being transformed by Web 2.0 and the promise of Web 3.0. As Amazon nears a billion pages in Google’s index understanding the interconnected “platform-yness” of Internet marketing has never been more important.

• UGC Rules – One of the implications of living in the land of platforms is you can’t create enough content to win keyword wars on your own. You team and content creation budget isn’t big enough even if you have millions. User generated content (UGC) is KEY. Create campaigns that develop community and encourage people to share your site across their social nets (and remember to use the Facebook LIKE button whenever possible). You may want to read my 1:10:89 Rule post too as it explains how magical and rare contributors are. My favorite UGC tools are polls, contests and games. Each UGC tactic has a “best practice” application I will write about in another post.

• Content, Community and Campaigns THEN Conversions – Living in a platform time means learning SEO stepping stones to success. Each step builds on and contributes to the next. Create a content strategy. We create content strategies with extensive keyword research, something we’ve named ”branding keywords”. Branding Keywords maps keywords to business values, buying personas, buyer pain points and potential blue oceans (those keywords not frothy red with competition). This kind of research is a HUGE time commitment (days usually), but it makes your content and campaigns jump off the page. We are working on sharing these steps so anyone who wants to can “brand keywords” (look for our tutorial in about a month). Community can be as little as adding reviews or as much as building out a Facebook environment. Content without community support is a tree falling in the desert with no one to hear it. Campaigns are the “buy one get one free” or the “free white paper” or the “Holiday Sale” language of email and social marketing. You need deadlines, a great offer and compelling presentation across all touch points (site, blog, social, email) to motivate and cut through clutter and buyer apathy. Conversions come because you fire on every step. Any friction such as TRUST and REPUTATION must be fully eliminated (another post for another time). Conversions Key Performance Indicators can be anything including more time on site or increased page views. We like to make conversions some ACTION such as sign up, download or buy.

• SPEED – Go to Alexa or use a speed evaluation tool. If your site is anything other than FAST redesign it or serve it better or both. Google’s margins erode when pages take too long to load so they will punish your listings for slow response.

• SPAM – Work in SEO long enough and you can feel hidden SPAM traps. You know exactly how to SEO write to push keyword density without spamming. There are tools that you can use to confirm and help eliminate things like “stop words”, but do this long enough, test enough content and you develop an intuitive feel for what works. If you don’t have such a sense yet read my SEO Writing Tips 1 – 5 on ScentTrail Marketing for a quick crash course.

• DATA – We are constantly reminded that however much we think we know about SEO we don’t know anything. SEO and the Internet live organically in Real Time. The only things that matter or define SEO success is what is happening now. The good news is there is a sea of data to help cut the cost of the gamble. SEO and Internet marketing are always gambles, but informed ones perform better and better over the long run. Every now and again we re-read Black Swan by Taleb just in case we think we can finally predict Internet marketing’s future (no one can and arrogance goes before a huge fall in our Internet marketing experiences).

• Snake Oil – In another much younger life I sold soap for P&G, an honorable straight forward job. SEO is full of people who project confidence when they should have NONE. They use words they don’t understand but do so in a way that makes listeners confused or anxious. Here is a quick Snake Oil test. Ask a prospective SEO how they would change your home page title, the most important meta copy on any page. If they answer anything other than, “I have no idea,” RUN FOR THE HILLS. Existing sites are modeled and indexed in Google. Change is expected and accepted WITHIN parameters, within modeled limits. First rule of SEO is DO NO HARM. Anyone who, at a moment’s notice, creates a SEO plan for your site is dangerous and should be avoided. Avoid snake oil salesmen since the first rule they violate is DO NO HARM and harm within Google’s Elephant Memory Brain is forever (or a very long time anyway). Another good Snake Oil test is anyone who says, “I can get you #1 on X keyword in Y time.” The only way to achieve such a mission is to wear a black hat, to game or trick Google. Never game or trick Google. The math always wins and the over/under doesn’t favor such a tactic (what you stand to gain vs. lose). A former CFO told me, “I want you to make something happen on Google by the end of the week.” Something is happening on Google all the time, I had to explain, but only BAD things can happen for sure by the end of the week. Hard concept for a CFO to grasp.

Keep the faith, keep creating content and find a way to move your “site” to a platform generating UGC and the magic Google Juice it provides is the most important SEO lesson once you are past the low hanging fruit of solid meta, body copy, tags and purple cow link bait.

Hope these ideas have helped. Look for our Free SEO White paper and more on Branding Keywords soon. If you would like to be kept up-to-date with the latest at Atlantic BT (never share our list and don’t spam) use the link below to stay in touch.

Yes, Please Add Me To Your Think Like An Internet Marketer Email List.

Martin
Director Marketing

Suggested Reading:

Phil Simon’s new book

The Age of the Platform

Google caused a stir in the Internet a couple weeks ago. Google announced that they would encrypt the search sessions of users signed into Google accounts (also called SSL or secure socket layer encryption.) Why would Google do this? That’s a great question. This question is creating heated Is Google Good Or Evil debates all around the web (read my colleague Brian Chiou’s Google Good Or Evil article for his take).

What does SSL Encryption really mean?

SSL encryption means search queries and search results are private. Search results are only visible and accessible to the individual user on the other end of the computer (or phone)…well, AND to Google of course.

Did search engine optimization get harder?

Yes, since search engine optimizers lost the ability to identify keywords searched for a large portion of web traffic. SSL encryption means Internet marketing analysts can’t tie a keyword searched to a goal (or conversion) on a website for users signed into their Google Account.

Were we spoiled with free access to such valuable information in the past?

Google’s decision to limit analysis comes as a blow. SSL encryption isn’t Google’s first paradigm shift and won’t be their last. But why would Google cloak something we are used to knowing? Something we used to help clients optimize content for search marketing?

Google says in their official blog that they want to “make search more secure”:

As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users.

Is Google really concerned about our privacy? I just looked up my house in Google Earth. There is my car sitting in the driveway. I could zoom and see me sitting on the couch watching TV. Security? Really?

Google says they will continue to pass across secure socket layer data for those using Google’s advertising platforms. SSL encryption only affects organic (non-paid) search results. The lesson here: Pay the price and Google will giftwrap keywords, tie a bow around them and drop them in your lap.

Not convinced money is at the bottom of Google’s SSL encryption?

SSL kills retargeting, the practice of showing ads related to recently visited sites. Retargeting works for old advertising reasons. Retargeting works because repetition works. Retargeting works because customers think serendipity when a massive, intelligent, invisible hand sends subliminal messages and influences free will. Leaving aside the used car salesman feel to retargeting for another post, Google killed retargeting because of how this marketing tactic impacts search. Retargeting reduces search volume. Reduce search volume and Google’s PPC money takes a hit. Money–not security–is at the bottom of Google’s SSL encryption change.

Does Google have something else up their sleeve?

The answer to that question is always YES. Are they prepping us for a paid tool that will allow access to this valuable data? Is Google pushing us to pay for data to improve their $10 billion revenue (from last quarter alone)? Answer: YES.

Or is Google responding to a security backlash? An “adbusters-like” attack on retargeting? Is Google taking steps to improve their privacy policy to benefit the end user? Like most things Google, the answers to all of these questions and many more is always YES. Personally I will believe in the divine Goodness of the “do no evil” company when my house isn’t so easily accessible from any cell phone, iPad or computer on earth.

So, where do we go from here?

As Internet Marketing Specialists, SSL encryption means we have our work cut out for us. We need to be creative in how we collect, analyze and report with our new search engine marketing (SEM) reality. Our Internet marketing world is challenged once again. But who isn’t up for a good challenge?

We say bring it on, Google. We’ll adapt. We’ll figure out ways to help clients understand your new SSL world as we’ve figured out all the other new worlds you’ve created. You’ll make us better Internet Marketers because of it. So thank you Google. I knew I loved you for a reason.

What is “pay per click”?

“Pay per click” is an advertising service where you only pay for your advertisement if a customer clicks on the ad. The innovative “pay per click” service allows you to compete for customers in your target market on the Web. How much you are willing to put into your “pay per click” budget directly impacts how much your advertisements relate to your prospective customers. But, remember – while pay-per click advertisements may increase the number of customers clicking into your website, it does not guarantee sales.

When should I purchase “pay per click” services from a management team?

During my experiences as a part of Atlantic BT’s internet marketing team, I have identified three key questions to consider when considering pay per click as a marketing channel: 1) Are you investing for the long term? 2) Are the website designers flexible?, and 3) Are you familiar with basic pay per click terminology?

I will discuss the importance of each question below.

Question 1: Are you in it for the long haul?

Many companies think that online or web-based advertisements produce instantaneous results. (After all, the customers are just clicking a link!). While this may happen sometimes, in most pay per click advertising campaigns, this just doesn’t happen.

Even great “pay per click” management companies will only create truly effective advertisements after they figure out the following details about your firm:

• What are the goals with this businesses website?
• Are we tracking website user behavior with Web Analytics software?
• How can we track return on investment with their current website?
• What different products and services exist within the business?
• What keywords are important to these products and/or services?
• What advertisements sell these products and/or services best?
• What landing pages are important to these products and/or services?
• How much should we be spending per sale?

These questions cannot be answered instantaneously. The management team must adjust their actions according to the answers they discover through trial-and-error. In order to get things moving quickly, I recommend increasing your “pay per click” budget during the initial few months of working with a “pay per click” management team. With a higher pay per click budget, you are giving the pay per click company the ability to pull in larger sample sizes of data. This allows the team to use statistics and data analytical tools to make better choices regarding the type of advertisements, effective keywords, landing pages and products.

This initial process of collecting data may not generate a profit for you for a few months, but will help create more effective advertisements in the long term. So, if you’re in it for the long term – pay per click advertising may be more up your alley. But if you want short term results (say, for a promotion of a sale good), some other type of advertising might be more effective.

Question 2: Are the people in charge of the website open-minded, quick-moving team players?

When you invest into pay per click advertising, it is very likely that changes to the website will need to be made.

There are two types of relationships at work here: in the first type, you have a business that works with two separate companies for web development and internet marketing, and in the second type, you have a business that works with one company for both web development and internet marketing.
First type of relationship: Business works with both a Web Development company and pay per click company

In this type of relationship, I have found that marketing time and budget is wasted due to lost-in-translation, stubbornness and slow development changes. For this type of relationship, you the business owner needs to establish trust with both companies as well as establish trust between the two companies.

The three items that I commonly see happen in this type of relationship:

Lost-in-translation

If you plan on working with two distinct companies for these two services, allow both parties to discuss strategy with one another. You do not want to find yourself in the position of playing, “he said” – “she said” about topics which you may not be comfortable re-explaining. Think back to grade school with the “the telephone game”. Instead of whispering one sentence, you are whispering an online marketing strategy. Mistakes will be made, and budgets will be wasted.
Stubbornness

A web development company will have made suggestions and recommendations during the website creation phase which they may not wish to retract. Sometimes a web development company will try to refute a change, as a good web development company will be proud of what they have already done for your website. This hesitancy to implement a change can lead to wasted marketing time and therefore wasted money. You need to review the evidence that your internet marketing company has provided and weigh that against the cost / time frame for the web development change. You are only collecting cost / time frame from the web development company and the strategy / research from the internet marketing company. It is generally a bad idea to let either party dabble with the other’s expertise.
Slow development

It is understandable that a web development company cannot work exclusively with your business. So, in most cases the developers at the company have other business websites to work on and not just yours. However, if you find yourself waiting a month or two for changes that the internet marketing company recommended do realize that this directly affects the strategy that the internet marketing company has set out for you.

Second type of relationship: Business works with one all-in-one company such as AtlanticBT

Here at Atlantic BT, we have the luxury of having web development, internet marketing (pay per click management as well), web hosting and web design all under one roof so our clients need only to speak with one company about the different services. In this case, “lost in translation”, stubbornness and slow development are less of an issue. These types of relationships generally work better, because things are done quicker due to the departments trusting one another and knowing their capabilities.
For this type of relationship, it is important that you, the business owner, trust this business’s strategy as well as its web development capabilities and design work.

Question 3: Are you familiar with basic pay per click terms?

The last thing you want is to be nodding your head at something you do not understand. Now, you should be in the position to freely ask your pay per click management company questions. However, most of these relationships are hourly – make sure that you don’t a question which you can answer yourself with a simple Google search.

Here is a crash course on some important acronyms and pay per click lingo: (my personal definitions)

• Ad Campaign- An overarching category that contains multiple ad groups.
• Ad Group- Contains multiple keywords and advertisements within a group. Advertisements will only display for keyword that are found within the Ad group.
• Keyword- The search query or phrase that the marketing team anticipates your potential customers will type.

• Text Ad- Multiple text ads can be placed at the Ad Group level and displays when keywords within the Ad Group are typed.

• Impressions-The number of times the search network has displayed your advertisement. This metric can be seen at the keyword, advertisement, ad group, ad campaign and account level.
• Clicks- The number of times consumers have clicked on your advertisement. This metric can be seen at the keyword, advertisement, ad group, ad campaign and account level.
• CTR- Click-through-rate is a percentage derived from clicks on a specific advertisement divided by the amount of impressions which the advertisement had. This metric can be seen at the keyword, advertisement, ad group, ad campaign and account levels.
• CPC- Cost-per-click is the rate which is paid for a click on a specific keyword.
• CPM- Cost-per-thousand-impressions is a less common payment model. It is the rate which is paid for every thousand impressions for a specific keyword.
• Avg. CPC- The average cost-per-click across an arbitrary time period. This metric can be seen at the keyword, advertisement, ad group, ad campaign and account level.
• Avg. CPM- The average cost-per-impression across an arbitrary time period. This metric can be seen at the keyword, advertisement, ad group, ad campaign and account level.
• Conversion Rate- A metric that is tracked only if your pay per click management company implements conversion code on a page that is considered a successful transaction. A successful transaction can be defined as a newsletter sign up, blog sign up, purchase on the site, etc. This percentage is derived from number of conversions divided by number of clicks. This metric can be seen at the keyword, advertisement, ad group, ad campaign and account levels.
• Cost per Conversion- The rate which you are paying for each conversion. This dollar value is determined by cost divided by number of conversions. This metric can be seen at the keyword, advertisement, ad group, ad campaign and account levels.

Now that you have a taste of what you are getting into, do you have any questions for us? If you do, feel free to post a comment. If it is a more sensitive topic, feel free to contact us privately.

There are many businesses who find themselves in the pay-per-click trap and at the end of the day most of their profits are paid to Google for the advertising they rely on to sustain their businesses. Getting to the bottom of this “pay-per-click trap” and how you could be working for Google will take a little explanation.

Media outlets and other sources of advertising have always charged based on the number of impressions/viewers/listeners/readers and set their pricing based on what the market will bear. So what’s wrong with that?  Well, traditional media is different from Internet advertising, specifically the pay-per-click model and how it affects pricing and competition, and this changes everything. (check out “Do We All Work for Google?“)

Let’s step back and explore the basic economics behind PPC advertising and its relationship to Internet commerce. PPC advertising is setup in a bid/auction model where the more you are willing to pay, the higher your ad will be placed in the sponsored results for your target keywords. Using free-market economic principals you would assume that over time competition for these keywords will naturally increase the cost per click. So again, what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong is that the very nature of the Internet permits hyper-competition, therefore creating sustainable profit in markets where significant barriers to entry or competitive advantage do not exist is virtually impossible.

Using a recent headline bankruptcy to illustrate the point, Circuit City for most of its life was a 100% traditional retailer, it had physical locations, sales people on the floor, and used lots of traditional advertising to bring customers in the door. If someone wanted to compete with them they had to also have a physical location, sales people, and use traditional advertising to bring customers in the door. So at least on the surface Circuit City and any competition that entered the market such as Best Buy would face similar challenges and would expect a reasonable profit margin to make the creation of the enterprise worthwhile. If there are already a couple of competitors in the market that aren’t making unreasonable profits or running inordinately sloppy operations, it’s unlikely that would-be competitors would jump into the fray lightly.

By contrast can you even count the number of online retailers who sell most or all of the products that Circuit City once carried in their stores? Searching for a particular model of LCD TV yields thousands of online retailers offering the product up for purchase. So what is the competitive advantage of one online retailer over another? For some shoppers it might be service or product information, however most shoppers will use whatever sources they can find to narrow down their selection but will make the purchase from whoever has the lowest price. So the only tangible advantage an online retailer has over another is cost and how readily they can be found on the Internet.

This brings us back to the PPC model and the underlying economic principals it relies on to generate staggering profit and growth for Google quarter after quarter. Anyone who wants to jump into online commerce can setup a Yahoo! store and a Google AdWords account and be ready to sell merchandise in a few days with very few barriers to entering the market. This new merchant has virtually no overhead outside of his or her basic living expenses such as food, rent, and advertising.

The cost per click will naturally increase as each new competitor enters the market and the only thing that will stop the increase in PPC bids is the inability for the market to bear anything higher. This happens in nearly real-time as advertisers adjust their bids based on sales conversions, and in the very back of their minds the profit they are making on those sales. Businesses with the best converting websites and the slimmest overhead and profit will ultimately prevail and at the end of the day Google very well might be making more profit from your business than you do. If Google is making more profit from your business than you, then like it or not you’re working for Google.

You might be thinking that Internet commerce is hopeless at this point, but that’s not the case. The key to competing on the Internet is that you MUST find ways to carve out competitive advantages or you will be doomed to work for Google and eke out whatever meager profits the market will bear.

Areas you might consider exploring for competitive advantage are search optimization, building a better Website, creating a very focused niche with exceptional knowledge within that area, increasing the value of each customer through repeat purchase programs, customer referral programs, or partnerships.

Here’s how the PPC trap works:

A business jumps into online advertising by bidding on a few keywords on a search engine. At first, competition is low and the bid price for the keywords is also low, so the business is able to grow and prosper online. As time goes on, more competition enters the market and bid prices steadily increase. By now the business is dependent on the flow of new business leads from the paid advertising, so they double-down and increase their spending to maintain top positions and traffic. As spending increases, conversions decrease because there are more competitors aggressively competing for each customer.

We call it a trap because companies we’ve worked with (and we were brought in to help) were literally trapped by their paid search engine advertising. The operation they have created around the business generated from the PPC advertising creates fixed overhead/expenses so they are forced to continue advertising just to sustain their operation. However, simultaneously they are breaking even (or worse) from their ongoing operations due to the high cost of advertising.

Breaking the cycle can be difficult and requires some delicate work to bring the business back to profitability and eliminate the PPC dependency. In many cases it simply involves a focus on fundamentals including increasing conversions, increasing revenue per customer, reducing overhead, and a focus on natural search engine optimization. However, in some cases the business fundamentals can be so upside down that the only option is a bankruptcy reorganization and subsequently focusing on the fundamentals described above.

If you think you might be at risk of falling into the PPC trap, the sooner you identify the issue and begin working on solving it the stronger your business will be in the long run. Even if things are going well and profits are strong, if your business is based in a large part on PPC advertising it would be smart to diversify your advertising and marketing a bit and concentrate on building competitive advantages wherever possible.

As a side note, if you found this post interesting you might also check out our related article “Are You Working for Google?” This covers the PPC model in a bit more detail as well as our thoughts on sustainable competitive advantage on the Internet.

One solution is organic search engine optimization (SEO) which provides relevant traffic and a fraction of the cost of pay per click advertising. This is accomplished in short by filling your website with quality content that is a resource on a particular subject, and then informing other sites to link to your content. The end result is search engines regarding your site as an authority and displaying your site in the search results when a relevant term is searched. These organic (or natural) search results are absolute free to click and deliver the same targeted visitor to your website. The only cost associated with SEO is paying for the expertise it takes to enrich your site in a manner that search engines find appealing and then maintain the results / placement against competing websites. The costs can vary by industry and the competition surrounding coveted search terms, but in the long term will result in lower CPA verses pay per click marketing.

One solution is organic search engine optimization (SEO) which provides relevant traffic and a fraction of the cost of pay per click advertising. This is accomplished in short by filling your website with quality content that is a resource on a particular subject, and then informing other sites to link to your content. The end result is search engines regarding your site as an authority and displaying your site in the search results when a relevant term is searched. These organic (or natural) search results are absolute free to click and deliver the same targeted visitor to your website. The only cost associated with SEO is paying for the expertise it takes to enrich your site in a manner that search engines find appealing and then maintain the results / placement against competing websites. The costs can vary by industry and the competition surrounding coveted search terms, but in the long term will result in lower CPA versus pay per click marketing.