seojealous

disclaimer: i am not calling rand fishkin out. honest.

while reading rand’s summer lull post on seomoz this morning, his commentary on the following point caught my eye:

20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before 

yes, that’s a huge chunk. but is it ”daunting, overwhelming, all-consuming”? nah. i agree with rand that user generated content is a great tool for capturing long tail opportunities, but i couldn’t help but dwell on his choice of words (the emphasis is mine):

“no matter how proliferate a writer you are and no matter how excellent your editorial work, you can never match the power of UGC…”

here’s the inherent problem: seo is not about you. when you spend more time thinking about your techniques and the assets you can leverage than you spend thinking about your visitors, you’re forgetting marketing 101. marketing is all about the me - i’m your audience. i don’t care about you and your excellent skills. i’ve got a problem. i need something. i’m looking for stuff.   

the key to successful long tail optimization is knowing your audience, and anticipating their needs. before drafting content, do some homework. simple keyword research only scratches the surface. think about who you’re writing to. if you’re selling high chairs, cruise some new mommy message boards to uncover their most dreaded mealtime challenges. if you’re pushing skateboards, it’s not enough to slap ‘tony hawk’ in your title tag and call it a night. who’s on the scene right now? what are the sickest new tricks? and do the kids still say ‘sick,’ or was that so three years ago?

take some time to really research your ideal visitor. what does this person do when not busy buying your gear? think about what they read, what they write, and where they go to get information. are they afraid of something? (wrinkles? aging? getting caught wearing last season’s jeans?) facebook, people magazine, bad summer reality tv, political blogs, digg, the local record store - clues are everywhere, and pop culture is your friend. if you get really desperate, try something drastic: talk to some real, live people who you’d like to bring in to your site. if you’re in house for an online retail site, track down a customer service rep and ask if you can field a couple calls. if you’re consulting from the outside, get creative. go out and meet your target market. they’re folks like us, after all.

the long tail presents enormous opportunities, and if you understand your market and cater to your audience, you’ll be well-positioned to benefit. yes, go ahead and engage your visitors and let them supply you with delicious, free user-generated web content, but never trust them to do your dirty work. there’s nothin’ beats some highly targeted content, written in the appropriate vernacular, incorporating slang terms and synonyms, addressing current trends, supplying how-to tips, playing to your crowd’s hopes and dreams. your content is never ‘finished.’ keep writing.

and if you don’t have to write your own content, don’t forget to pay your copywriter. he/she is cranky, and delirious from lack of sleep. heck, go in there right now and tell him/her how fabulous he/she is. better bring some strong coffee with you.

another week, another whirlwind trip all in the name of internet marketing. moments after the plane touched down, my colleague voiced the question on everyone’s mind: “which way to don johnson’s house*?”

travelling for work is a great cover. it provides the perfect excuse to rationalize uber-tourist behavior. it’s almost as if you’re not really there - it’s a stolen moment. so if in your spare time you end up drinking at the hard rock cafe or trotting up and down south beach, you have plausible deniability. you’re not a pale midwestern tourist. you’re working. go ahead and order that delicious cuban food while drinking your mojito from a bright orange souvenir goblet.

*weird coincidence: i’ve been watching jeopardy while writing this - that last question just referenced don johnson and melanie griffith.

a quick shout-out to fellow twin cities seo sarah bernier who presented today at ses latino in miami. sarah, a spanish language search marketing consultant, was on the search term research & targeting panel, live-blogged by dave rohrer at search engine roundtable. the panel shared tips on conducting effective keyword research to attract spanish language search users to your site.

by now, you’ve read the mozzers’ smx diaries twice over. you’ve watched the video of rand fishkin getting down at the google dance a few dozen times. but there’s still one thing you didn’t know about smx: an infamous pioneer of the urban exploration underground was among us in seattle. 

in self-described web 1.0 fashion, max action has finally updated the action squad site (website, he’s quick to point out - not blog), retelling his adventures above and below seattle two weeks ago. he describes it thusly: 

- 1 part action squad trip log for the usual site visitors,
- 1 part vacation blog for friends and family,
- 1 part synchronicity tale, and
- 1 part seo conference blog.

i’d also add ‘3 parts cultural juxtaposition.’ if you’ve never heard of urban exploration, here’s a place to start: max action at smx seattle. as a personal endorsement, max action is the kind of guy you’d follow down the side of a steep limestone cliff in la jolla while wearing cheap flip flops. in the moment, it would never cross your mind that this might not be a good idea.

*note that action squad follows a strict, self-imposed code of conduct. that said, many of their adventures are potentially dangerous and somewhat less than legal. disclaimer, etc.

as promised, part deux!

establish clear conversion benchmarks up front
before contracts are signed and work begins, sit down with clients and listen attentively as they discuss their goals. if their expectations are unrealistic, this is the time for damage control - not six months down the road. 

if the site will be used as a lead-generation tool, direct contacts may be your primary conversion goal. be prepared to measure all contacts generated by the site, including email, intake form submissions, and phone calls. if the website will also support client communication and retention, establish a set of secondary conversion benchmarks related to these goals. secondary conversions could include online coupon downloads, newsletter subscriptions, contest entries, etc.

when specific goals aren’t established up front, how do clients determine the ’success’ or ‘failure’ of their site? they usually latch on to the only visible signal they have: rank. when a client is obsessed with their position, any fluctuation is bound to give them conniptions. and since rankings are fluid and relative (more so now than ever before), conniptions are almost inevitable. even if you get great exposure for your most prized keywords, those rankings are worthless if you don’t convert visitors and generate revenue. you may drive a flood of traffic to a website, but if you fail to establish clear conversion goals, it’s going to be hard to declare success.

choose an appropriate analytics tool
different tools have very different levels of user-friendliness, ranging from girl-next-door to no-chance-of-parole. if you’re doing all the dirty work yourself and preparing neat, tidy summaries to clients on a regular basis, by all means use whatever you like best. but if you have a hands-on client who wants access to their data in real time, choose a program with a user-friendly interface. avoid analytics rage at all costs - no matter how good those results are, they’ll never adequately impress if your client is in a frustrated state of mind every time he or she checks in.

if you do opt to give clients access to their analytics, don’t just send their login information and back away. have a training session. teach them what they’re looking at, and focus on the metrics that show important performance trends. without baseline training, too much information is a dangerous thing.

track all phone leads
this is an absolutely critical step. even if you have an intake form on your site, many users will find it simpler pick up the phone and call. people searching for service providers often seek an immediate response, and depending on your client’s vertical, an email volley may be out of the question (e.g. referring keyword: twin cities plumber emergency 24 hrs).

the most effective phone tracking method is to dedicate a single phone number exclusively to your web traffic. consider obtaining a unique toll-free number, post it on the website, and never list it in any other marketing materials. if your client prefers to use a local number (and this may be a good idea if you’re relying heavily on local search), dedicate a separate cell phone number to the website (you may also want to use this number for IYP submissions & local search engine profiles). when the phone bill comes, all incoming calls generated by site are listed right there.

granted, you could also give the receptionist a stack of post-its and pencil to keep tally, but this is hardly science. 

expectations gone awry
here’s a case study: a local seo signed on to do some extensive contract work for a financial services company. the owners assured this unsuspecting seo that once they got people on the phone or in the office, they could close the deal with 1/3 of their prospects. they just needed him to get the leads, and offered unsuspecting seo a hefty bonus based on the number of accounts opened.

a few months into the project, unsuspecting seo discovered he had generated approximately 500 promising leads that had never been contacted by the financial firm. no phone calls, no emails, no appointments scheduled. so despite the highly effective generation of qualified leads, unsuspecting seo had no chance of seeing that promised bonus money.

in my work with ecommerce sites, it’s relatively easy to determine whether organic efforts and paid campaigns are working - we either sell more product, or we don’t. with the help of good anayltics tools, traffic can be easily tied to dollars. yes, i’m being overly simplistic here, but money is the ultimate kpi.

these days, a much bigger portion of my work involves getting exposure for small- to medium-sized businesses that offer services, not stuff. since fedex won’t deliver a dentist or licensed massage therapist to your door, those actual visitor-to-$$ conversions tend to happen offline. leads are generated online when users submit an intake form, send an email, or find the number and pick up the phone. leads are relatively easy to track from my end. but leads don’t always turn into dollars. it becomes much more complex to follow traffic past the point of lead generation and into the realm where actual monies are exchanged. so what are the best ways to measure roi for these clients?

part 2 (the good part) to follow. cue suspenseful cliffhanger music here.

with all the traveling i’ve done recently, i’ve had the luxury of extra reading time - i try to finish a book every time i’m in the air. in the past week, i completed two interesting reads. the first was deep economy: the wealth of communities and the durable future by bill mckibben. due in part to slim pickin’s at the airport bookstore, the second was the unavoidable #1 bestseller the assault on reason by al gore (yeah, yeah - stay with me). what i found really interesting was the point where these books intersect for a moment in a discussion of the internet’s unprecedented capacity to inform and mobilize communities. 

first, a 10 second summary of each. in deep economy, mckibben deals with a range of topics including local food and energy production, entreprenuership in china, and citizen-run radio stations. the book centers around one primary question: can society reach the point where having more no longer makes things better? and as you may imagine, gore’s book discusses the current administration’s policies, climate change, and participatory democracy. 

their shared ground points to the internet as a still-unfettered destination for public participation. mckibben writes: “despite every effort to turn it into one more television set[…], the internet continues to operate more like - to use my favorite metaphor - a farmers market where a million people bring their produce to sell.” this shared medium differs widely from tv in its collaborative nature. a user on the web engages in all sorts of active behaviors: searching, scanning, reading, watching video, and always making conscious choices about what to consume.

not so with television. sure, by turning on the set, the tv viewer consents to accept its content. but the viewer is not active; instead he or she is acted upon and advertised to without the ability to participate in the conversation.

from gore’s perspective, ”the easy accessibility individuals have to publish ideas on the internet has led to the emergence of a new meritocracy of ideas that is similar in some ways to the public forum that existed during the time of america’s founding.” and that’s powerful stuff. it’s easy to forget that we work every day in a medium that has completely changed the way people share and consume information, introducing a new wave of public discourse. and much of the work we do has made the space better; when people look for news, or information, or that product-they-just-gotta-have, they can easily find it.

i’m off to miami in a couple weeks. maybe next time i’ll just read some fiction?

earlier this year, the number of clients asking questions about local search started to skyrocket. that funny little map kept showing up in search results, and new blog posts and articles sprang up everywhere. this baseline awareness is a start, but so much confusion still surrounds local search optimization and how it functions as a marketing tool. to people absorbed in the search sphere, most local search concepts and techniques seem fairly straightforward. but after numerous conversations with non-search humans, i can confirm that they must be tricky enough. a few pesky client misconceptions:

1. there are only three local results. obsession with the one-box runs rampant! many people are blown away when you demonstrate that google maps, yahoo local, and live search local can actually produce whole pages full of local business results. it’s no wonder google has pushed so hard to integrate local results into their traditional serps. so many typical search users don’t realize they have a choice.

2. google is sending me junk mail. the post card verification requirement gets them every time. stop throwing that away!

3. faking client testimonials on 3rd-party review sites is a great idea. people, don’t fake it (i’m sure numerous articles in back-issues of cosmo would back me up). gaming user-generated content may be tempting, but readers have a knack for sniffing out insincerity, and they don’t have a high-tolerance for thinly-veiled attempts at manipulation. positive reviews in citysearch, insider pages and other sources can be great conversion tools; don’t turn them into big turnoffs. try encouraging real, live customers to spread some goodwill if they’ve had a good experience.

it’s always an adventure.

though you’ve spent the better part of a couple days revelling in utterly thorough live-coverage provided by the lovely lisa barone and susan esparza at bruce clay blog, jane copeland and rebecca kelly at seomoz, and others, i wanted to share some impressions after the wrap of the first smx conference.

first report: not a box lunch in sight. if you win over the stomachs, hearts and minds follow closely behind. clever planning by danny and company.

networking events: excellent. microsoft threw a great kickoff party with live music. the dj at the google dance played a mix of the 80s’ greatest hits (journey + bangles mash up = awesome). yahoo fed us proscuitto. free drinks all around. i met a bunch of great search marketers, including a few from my neighborhood back home.

the sessions: i attended the organic track. in many cases, session q & a’s led to the most interesting discussions. day 1 reflected the strongest programming - you&a with matt cutts (featuring a danny sullivan strip tease - no lie), seo meet smm, and personalized search: fear or not? were all pretty fruitful. on day 2, the session-of-which-i-swore-not-to-speak produced some, er… stuff, but i dare not speak of it.

was it “advanced?”: attendees expressed some mixed feelings about this. the speakers for this debut conference faced a significant challenge in creating high level presentations. who or what is advanced, and what meaning does that word carry as we discuss an industry of professionals with widely varied practical experience and fractured specialties? the lack of definition creates a fundamental problem. you may be a pro at exploiting social media, that doesn’t preclude your status a technical guru. you may be a cloaking superstar, but that may not make you a usability specialist. when danny sullivan mentions Universal Search, then pauses and asks the question, “does everyone in the room know about Universal Search?” some hands raise up.

overall, the speakers were up to the task. some material erred on the side of caution, but each session at search marketing expo produced something worth the time.

for tonight, that’s the quick summary. more to come tomorrow from minneapolis.

i’m headed to seattle this weekend to attend what promises to be one of the best conferences in recent years. danny sullivan’s first smx agenda raises the bar: duplicate content issues, social media marketing, better ways to do boring stuff, and an early morning group interrogation of matt cutts. let’s hope he’s still in that sleepy, lucid-dream state: able to tell us everything he knows, but too groggy to realize he shouldn’t.

among these session topics, one stands out: personalized search: fear or not? i can’t wait to hear some perspectives on this one, especially since i’ve been going around the country for the last few weeks (both physically and webinar-ly. ever been in the hartford, ct airport? not pretty) in attempts to smite the fear out of some concerned parties. isn’t it a good thing that search engines serve relevant content to individual users based on their behaviors, patterns and preferrences? don’t advanced targeting tactics mean the users who see my clients’ sites in the search results will be even better-qualified?

the real problem? while things like personalization, geo-targeting, and google’s universal search get us all ’cited, they throw a big wrench our clients’ pre-conceived concept of search engine success: you get a medal and a gold star and the number 1 (or 3…or 8 ) pinned to your vest. in a climate where rank is relative and fluid, it can be quite a challenge to convince clients that their sites aren’t ‘broken’ if they don’t appear in the serp slot on every computer.

rank re-education camp, anyone? it’s summer - all we need is a lake, some tents, and canoes. and a bunch of laptops. and a very powerful wifi signal.