SoloSEO

Know your competitors, before they know you.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 28th, 2007

Many see SEO strategies as a process which is only used when you are constructing your web site, or after launch to improve the site performance in SERPs, but SEO tools can also be used effectively to analyze prospective markets, even before a decision is made to start competing in a particular market.

By using some of the SEO tools, one can quickly identify the leading competitors in just about any market, and analyze their online presence, the quality and mass of their content, effective keywords, traffic, among other indicators. So why not use these tools before launching a business? I know of many entrepreneurs, including myself, that have come up with an idea, then just jumped in with both feet, without taking time to really look at the competitors online, but just generally in the marketplace. And if you feel you can out-compete the existing competitors, then you just go for it. That was pretty much the way we have done things around here for years. However, through the creation of SoloSEO, and the process we went through to learn the market, analyze what was presently out there, and fill the void we felt existed, we learned a bunch about online competitive analysis. Now that we have built the tools, and can perform online competitive analysis easily, it has changed they way we analyze opportunities and it affects our priorities on which markets we now enter and the timing of the entrance.

In one of our other businesses we bring in products from other countries and set up online stores to sell those products online. We have access to a wide variety of products from international manufacturers, so making a decision on which product to launch next has always been open for debate, and eventually decided by “gut-feel.” But those days are past. With the launch of the new SoloSEO competitive reports system earlier this month, we now can actually enter in the domains of the competitors from various industries we feel are most worthy of review, and then we watch how they perform. Based on what we see, we can then decide which industries to enter, and also prepare our new site to better compete head to head with our competitors right out of the gate. We have time to create content, watch pricing trends, see what is bringing in the most traffic, analyze the popular keywords, and make the appropriate changes to the site before launch; it is obviously a huge competitive advantage.

Anyone in business should understand the importance of watching their competitors, it can essentially be the difference between market success and failing miserably, and now that there are tools which make this once daunting, time consuming, and frustrating task very simple, not participating in competitive analysis isn’t an option. If you are not presently analyzing your competitors, I suggest you make it a point to start. In a book called Made in America about Sam Walton’s life and the success of Walmart (a must read for all aspiring entrepreneurs), Mr. Walton speaks freely about walking into his competitor’s stores and taking notes, then going back to his store and implementing the good ideas, and improving on them. The success of Sam Walton is legendary, and much of it is based on his keen understanding of not only his target market, but also the knowledge he gained from his competitors. Knowing your competitors, duplicating what they do well, and then improving on your own product/service is what free market competition is all about. Simply building a better mouse trap.

If you haven’t done so, please review Michael’s blog post on the competitive report system, and begin keeping an eye on your online competitors ASAP. If you are already a SoloSEO subscriber, then these competitive reports are now included in the current service, and have been added at no additional cost. If you are considering starting your own business, the competitive report system can provide you with information on your potential competitors, which will give you an excellent understanding of how you are going to need to position your firm to out-compete the online leaders. Finally, even if you are just extremely curious about online business and want to learn more about trends, traffic and popular keywords, the competitive reports can be wonderfully addictive and couldn’t be simpler to use. Just pick the site(s) you want to watch, and the completed reports magically appear in your email box for review at your convenience. Competitive analysis is now as easy as opening an email. What an improvement!

Add comment Visited 1552 times February 28th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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10 Reasons to use Paid SEO Tools instead of Free SEO Tools

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 22nd, 2007

If you take a step back and look at it, the SEO industry is rather odd. SEO experts who are paid thousands of dollars by companies will also freely share tips, tricks, principles, pricing structures, and SEO advice. Then we come to the tools, where there are literally thousands of free SEO tools spread across the web, helping you check backlinks, perform keyword research, and measuring various metrics.

The free help and advice from the experts is fantastic. The free SEO tools, however, have some issues that can make SEO more difficult than it needs to be. The following reasons explain why paid SEO tools have many advantages pver free SEO tools and lead to better and more productive SEO.

1) Reliability: Free tools are not well supported by their authors because there is little to no incentive to make sure the tool is always working and available for use. There can even be disincentives to the authors, paying for bandwidth or API usage without compensation from users of the tools. If programmers can either be assigned to work on a client’s site or to fix/update the free tool, the client obviously comes first. Paid tools on the other hand give an incentive to the authors for support and maintainenance of the tool because users expect tools they pay for to work and be reliable. Using programmer resources on the part of the tool author to fix/update the tools pays for itself in maintaining and attracting paid tool clients.

2) Accuracy: Although some free tools are accurate, there is little motivation for free tool authors to improve and update algorithms, sources, and other factors involved in determining the results of the tools. Authors with paid tools are motivated to stay on top of their tools and when accuracy is in question, they’ll hear about it from their clients, and have motivation to make changes.

3) Convenience: We’ve all been there, trying to find that one tool I used that one time at that one site. Our paid toolset, SoloSEO, makes it much more convenient for you to use your tools. One site to bookmark, one login to remember, and you’ve got access to all the SEO tools you’ll need under one roof.

4) Integration: Having free SEO tools scattered all over the web is not only a hassle, but there’s no chance for integrating these tools together. SoloSEO has put together an integrated system for managing keywords, link building, and content tracking. You can use keyword tools directly from keyword and link lists, for example. The tools and lists work together so you’re not copying and pasting from an Excel file all day long.

5) Innovation: It’s hard to innovate when there is no driving force. When I am working on new tools or reports I am motivated by our potential to attract new subscribers and keep current subscribers happy. With free SEO tools, typically the author has bigger fish to fry than to think of new free SEO tools, or how to make them better.

6) Support: The authors of free tools usually give little to no support for their tools. They have regular jobs that actually pays them, and these types of things are more important for his/her time. With Paid SEO Tools, you have support from either the authors or a support team in case of problems or issues that come up. With a paid SEO tool you will usually get a response back within 24 hours, but with free SEO tools it is up to the convenience of the author.

7) Feedback: With paid SEO tools you should find that your feedback really counts and may even be implemented into the tools. With free SEO tools, the authors again have little motivation to put time and resources into something that does not generate revenue. At SoloSEO we have a feedback form right in the system. We try to answer all questions within 24 hours, and we have implemented more than a dozen suggestions from our customer base.

Keeping Track: Almost all free SEO tools do not offer to save your data, as this takes up resources on their server. Paid SEO tools want to make the tools as convenient and as helpful as possible, and so paid tools are more apt to save data, preferences, and the like.

9) Ease of Use: Paid SEO tools are very concerned with the interface, its appearance and functionality. You can easily find many U-G-L-Y free SEO tools that make you shiver just by looking at the form to use the tool. SoloSEO utilizes a simple yet functional interface, similar to WordPress admin, in having a main menu and sub menu to give you quick and simplified access to all the tools available.

10) Data Resources: Free SEO tools use free data resources to supply their results. SoloSEO (a paid SEO toolset), provides WordTracker data for keyword research (that alone is worth $57/month), and access additional data from Google, Alexa, and Amazon all in one system.

Now I’m not trying to say that all free SEO tools are bad, but I am saying there are inherent problems in the “model” of free SEO tools. I’ve also been trying to not make this an advertisement of SoloSEO, so forgive me if I failed, but there are areas where SoloSEO really fills a void in terms of powerful, integrated SEO tools (that’s why we started SoloSEO frankly). If you haven’t tried SoloSEO yet, now’s a great time to start a 2-week trial. It’s only $29/month after the free trial and you can manage 5 domains for that price ($4/each/month after). SoloSEO really pays for itself by saving you time, making you more efficient, and you even get access to data like WordTracker that you may already be paying for.

7 comments Visited 4561 times February 22nd, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Treat your Visitors from Search Ads and Contextual Ads Differently

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 21st, 2007

If you are running a PPC (pay-per-click) campaign with search engines, you can create campaigns that are either Search or Contextual based. Both have their merit and usefulness, but both have unique traits about the customer and their current frame-of-mind. If you’re looking to improve your conversion rate (who isn’t?), knowing these differences can certainly help. At the end, I’ll give some tips for programmers to tell the difference between your Search and Contextual Ad visitors.

Before we get into those differences, let me first just make sure we all know about these two types of PPC campaigns.

Search and Contextual Ad Refresher

A Search ad campaign will run on the top and side of a search engine when users come to perform a search. They type in a keyword and the search results page shows up, with both natural results and paid results. The paid results are based on the actual keyword used in the search by the user.

A Contextual ad campaign is displayed on websites that want advertising revenue from their site. You can even bid separately on the price of your keywords for content ads. The ads that display on these websites are based on the content of the page. If a page is about dog food and dog toys, the ads displayed on that page will be based on those topics. Your ad shows up when your keywords from your contextual ad campaign match the topic of the page, as well as other factors (bid price, quality, etc).

The Scenarios

Let’s start with a scenario to make it more real for you to see the differences, and see if you can spot them yourself before I give it away.

Search Ad Scenario: Joe’s wife just reminded him it is almost Mother’s day, so Joe is looking to send flowers to his mother in Colorado. His first method of finding a flower company that delivers flowers to another state is to use a search engine. He types in the first keyword that comes to mind, “mother’s day flowers”. Joe gets the results page and glances through the ads at the top of the page. There are even some prices in there, some mention Mother’s day too. He clicks on one of the ads.

Content Ad Scenario: Joe is reading about a new gardening technique for his tomatoes that he just can’t get to grow right. He notices an ad on the side of the article that reminds him that Mother’s day is coming soon. He thinks of his mother and that it would be nice to do something for Mom. He clicks on the ad.

Differences between Search and Contextual Ad Visitors

1) Focus
Joe, in the Search Ad Scenario, was specifically looking for flowers to send to Mom for Mother’s day. He set aside the time and is focused on doing this task right now. Your challenge as a Flower Delivery company would be to have the ad that captures Joe the most, be it by price, on-time delivery, freshness of the flowers (quality of product), or some sort of guarantee.

In the Contextual Ad Scenario, Joe’s mind has been on his struggling tomatoes, but the Content Ad diverted his attention to his Mother and Mother’s day. Your first challenge was capture him with the ad, which worked. Your next challenge is to follow through and maintain his focus so he gets the flowers (through your site) before he continues thinking about his failing tomatoes.

2) Readiness

In the Search Ad Scenario, Joe is ready to buy something. He may compare a few companies, but he wants to buy something. Your challenge is to allure him to your ad, then keep his interest in your site and product, and fulfill his needs and questions. His readiness can easily be quieted if there are stumbling blocks to the purchase (not trustworthy, too pricey, not enough options, no guarantee, not secure, etc). Joe from the Search Ad probably won’t care that your sale ends next week because he is ready to buy right now.

In the Contextual Ad Scenario, Joe has diverted his attention to your product, at least for now. He wasn’t specifically looking to buy flowers for Mom, so he may either buy now or come back another day. Both of these need to be addressed in your content and atmosphere of your site. If he is ready to buy now, it should be so easy to find the perfect flower bouquet for Mom and to make the purchase, that he doesn’t lose interest and go back to his tomatoes. If he is going to come back tomorrow, you need to find a way to make your brand/product sticky in his mind. Will he remember your site (branding)? Can he easily find the special you advertised again? Because Joe from the Contextual Ad is not necessarily buying right now, anything you can do to make buying now more advantageous would be good for you and for Joe.

The two scenarios above are helpful for showing the focus and readiness. Other products/services may have additional differences in Visitors’ frame-of-mind, but generally these two are applicable across the board. Certainly not all Search ad customers are ready to buy now, but compared to Contextual ad customers, they are “more ready”. Some advertisers will find they generate more revenue from Search and some from Contextual, it depends on many factors. But understanding more about your visitor when they come may be able to influence your conversion rate.

Treat your Visitors Differently based on Ad Type

If there was a way to tell the difference between a Search Ad visitor and a Contextual Ad visitor, would you do something about it? If it helped your conversions you probably would! There are two different ways to do this that I will illustrate. The first method isn’t as reliable and not as easy to implement as the second method.

(Method 1) In programming you can capture certain variables from each visitor, including what URL they came from. This is the HTTP_REFERER server variable. In PHP for example, you can capture this with $_SERVER[’HTTP_REFERER’]. In Perl, you can capture this with $ENV{’HTTP_REFERER’}. And for spelling freaks (like me), yes, REFERER is supposed to be spelled that way. Sometimes based on HTTP_REFERER alone you can distinguish whether the ad is Search or Contextual, but this is not always the case.

(Method 2) The best way is to include it in the URL of your ad. Set up separate campaigns for search and contextual ads. When setting these up, include a variable in the URL (address to your page) that distinguishes the two from each other. For example:

http://www.yourdomain.com/landingpage.html?adtype=search

http://www.yourdomain.com/landingpage.html?adtype=contextual

Then on your landing page, capture the variable ‘adtype’ and then adjust the content to fit the focus and readiness of the visitor. There are other strategies you can combine this with, such as basing the content on inferred intentions from the actual keyword that was used in the search.

What other differences do you see between visitors from these two sources, Search Ads and Contextual Ads?

2 comments Visited 1812 times February 21st, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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New Competitive SEO Report at SoloSEO.com

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 20th, 2007

Watching your competition is an important part of SEO and it can take quite a bit of work to stay on top of it all. We are excited to announce that SoloSEO now includes a powerful Competitive SEO Report to compare your SEO statistics and rankings with your competitors. The report is included with a membership and can even be run during a free trial of SoloSEO.

This competitive SEO report will run each month and results are sent to you via email so you don’t even need to log in after you set up the report. The report is easy to start, just fill in a few keywords and the domains of your competitors.

Once you set up the report it runs in the background, so you can continue using other tools in SoloSEO. After just a few minutes you will get an email with the completed report.

The report has three parts: 1) SEO Site Statistics, 2) Feedback on your statistics vs your competitors, and 3) Rankings of you and your competitors.

SEO Site Statistics

This report compares backlinks, pages indexed in Google and Yahoo, PageRank, and Alexa Rank. The backlinks (as reported by Yahoo) give you an idea of how you compare with your competitors in terms of quantity of backlinks. The quality of your backlinks, as well as topic relevancy and anchor text will need to be looked at separately to get the full picture (SoloSEO includes tools for this too), but this is a general metric for knowing the popularity and connectivity of a site. The pages indexed is a nice way to compare the size of your site with your competitors. More unique and quality content will always help, so this gives you a way to gauge on what you need to more effectively compete. PageRank is somewhat useful as a gauge of the quality of a site, but is by no means the all-important factor to worship in SEO. PageRank updates also only occur every several months. Alexa Rank is a gauge of the traffic your site is receiving, and like PageRank is more of a general metric than a golden Willy Wonka ticket.

Some general feedback, suggestions, and even congratulatory statements are given for each part of the SEO Site Statistics section, which is intended for beginner SEOs and non-SEOs to get an idea for what the numbers are saying to them.

The rankings of your site and your competitors are displayed for each keyword, giving you a quick and easy way to check how your site ranks versus your competitors. For now the chart uses Google for rankings, although this may expand in the future.

We are very excited about this report and the opportunities it affords you. We have been having fun running the report internally for our own companies. Having the report automatically run each month and emailed is a great feature that makes it even easier to keep track of it all.

Two other reports are also available in SoloSEO, the Keyword Rankings Report and Keyword Competion Report. The Keyword Rankings Report can now be set to automatically run weekly and monthly, which makes it even easier to keep up on your rankings for important keywords.

Try the new Competitive SEO Report, and other powerful SEO tools today by signing up for a free trial or by logging in to your account!

2 comments Visited 3622 times February 20th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Out SEO Your Competition

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 19th, 2007

We all know SEO assists a site to perform better in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), but the reasons people SEO can differ. Some just want to share their knowledge with the world and aren’t selling anything, (like in informational blogs), some want to rank as an authoritative site to increase the revenue in their AdSense campaigns, and some want to find new clients through organic search, or do better in their PPC campaigns. There are also some that are motivated by all or a combination of these motivations. For me personally it is the opportunity to find more clients, and to out-compete my competitors for those clients.

In the introduction to his seminal book On Competition, Michael Porter (recognized Harvard professor and expert in competitive studies) states:

“No company, and no country, can afford to ignore the need to compete. Every company, and every country, must try to understand and master competition” (Porter, 1998, p. i).

I come from a primarily business background, and have spent a good bit of time studying competitive analysis theory, or the use of different analytic tools to attempt to understand, predict and prepare for the strategic adjustment competitors are most likely to implement in the marketplace. It is truly a fascinating area of thought. However, each of these competitive analytic tools requires considerable amounts of time and research to make them worth anything, and even when the analysis is complete, it can only provide the researcher nothing more than a more educated guess as to what a competitor might do. Some widely used competitive analysis tools used today include: SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), Competitive Array, Game Theory (very interesting), Five-Forces, etc., just to name a few. There are even many firms that will perform the analysis for you, using a variety of these tools for a fee. Dun and Bradstreet offers small business firms information about their competitors for a fee, $9.99 per firm, for a firm analysis, $24.99 for an industry analysis and $65 for various marketing lists. Despite the inherent weaknesses of these various analysis tools, innumerable firms continue to spend all kinds of resources to run these analyses in hopes of putting themselves in a better competitive position.

Now on to why I love the online competitive world… There are certain SEO tools and techniques which provide us the opportunity to really know what our competitors are up to online, with real data. The SEs (Search Engines) have already aggregated the data, and using these SEO analysis tools properly can drastically reduce the ability of a competitor to surprise you, or make huge moves online unnoticed. Not to mention this real data reduces the need of firms to “make educated guesses” as to what their competitors are really up to. Online, the competitive marketplace is more transparent than offline, and with the increased competitive information comes the increased importance to be more competitively astute and responsive. So once competitive trends are discovered, firms need to react more quickly to address these trends, to stay ahead of the curve, and remain competitively viable. This is done by using other SEO tools which assist your site to become more competitive online, specifically in the SERPs. SoloSEO was built to not only to provide competitive intelligence tools, which efficiently watch industry competitors, but to also offer effective SEO tools, allowing firms to improve their online competitive position.

This week we will be launching a new service, which will make the competitive intelligence process more convenient and streamlined for our subscribers. We are very motivated to assist our clients become more aware of their competitors more quickly, and assist them improve the competitiveness of their sites with effective SEO tools. Please stay tuned…

Add comment Visited 1522 times February 19th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Keywords - More Than Meets the Eye

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 16th, 2007

When you were a kid, did you ever have one of these transformers? I had several transformers and even loved watching the cartoon. A transformer, like Optimus Prime, would be a semi-truck at first, but then you could move the pieces around and make it into a robot machine. The tagline for Transformers was, “Transformers, More than Meets the Eye”. Your keywords, just like the toy, contain more than meets the eye.

Often we approach our keywords simply as a pool of words that people use just to find our product or services. We get caught up in using keyword tools that will find any version of our keyword ever typed in, jumping at a new phrase that we might find, and then plugging it into a PPC campaign or a new page of content. But are you overlooking the “intention” of why your potential customer is using that keyword? The range of intentions of your customers are vast, but perhaps we can break them down into three categories:

1. Ready to Buy. I know what I want, I just need to get it.
2. Comparison shopping. I am trying to compare services/products, including features, price, warranty, etc.
3. Just curious. I found your product and am just looking to see what it was, but I’m not buying it right now.

Then within these categories, your customers are going to be concerned with any of the following, or in any combination thereof:

- Cost
- Quality
- Benefits
- Features
- Warranty/Guarantee
- Are other people using it? Do they like it?

Understanding your keywords and what the overall intention of the keyword is can help you direct your PPC advertising as well as your search and content optimization. If you know the intention of a keyword, why not write your content (on your keyword’s ranked/targeted page) focused on its intention?

Let’s take an example. Let’s say a customer is looking for some content for her website, and you have a content company. The customer could do several searches, depending on her needs. Let’s keep it down to three:

1. content for my website
2. seo content
3. cheap content

The trick is that each of these keywords can mean different things to different people. What you want to do is to identify the most common intention, the reason why most people would use this keyword.

content for my website
This one is pretty general. If it was my company and I was running an ad or trying to write a page focused on this phrase, I would consider the intention not to be at a “ready to buy” point, but not just curious either. The customer doesn’t necessarily tell you they are looking for unique content, fresh content, seo content, free content, etc. So I would tell them about different types of content, what kind of content is best for different needs, and what you an provide to them.

seo content
Already you know your customer knows what SEO is, and that they see the importance of content. They are probably more ready to buy than just curious, and they are probably also comparing content companies (otherwise they might have typed in the name of a company, group, or writer). Your content should focus on the SEO part, about “optimized content” and keeping your content fresh and updated on your site. Maybe include (or link out to other articles on your site) about how to optimize title and header tags. Make your pitch match the intention of the keyword.

cheap content
This keyword obviously tells you your customer is looking for something economical. Focus your content on not only the affordability of your content, but also the long term benefits of content for a site (good content can easily pay for itself quickly for many products/services). You could also warn your customer about what to watch out for when comparing with other content companies and detail the problems with using free content and articles.

How disappointing it would be (instant back button) to search for a phrase and find something so generic that it doesn’t fill any needs or fill any knowledge gaps. Your customers are expecting to find what they are looking for, why not give it to them?

Take some time to look at your keywords in more depth, and even categorize them by their intentions. Then match up your content with your keywords and see if the content covers the needs of the intention of the keyword. The benefits of this is that your customer will have filled her present needs, and this has a positive impact on her feelings toward your business/website.

And don’t forget that SoloSEO has tools to organize your keyword lists by category or topic, and to assign keywords to your content pages, making this a much easier process. Try a 2-week free trial of SoloSEO.

1 comment Visited 2037 times February 16th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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PPC Advice - Good or Bad… or VERY BAD

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 15th, 2007

Today, I took a few moments to take in a bit of the current online marketing blogscape. I eventually came across a post entitled “17 most common PPC mistakes web marketers make” by Igor Mor. It was posted on SEOMoz as part of their YOUMoz program where they “claim” posts from others they deem appropriate. Since my last post was about the ongoing feud between some PPC gurus and SEO pros, I was interested in the topic. As I read I was quite pleased with the content and the expertise Mr. Mor obviously has obtained through his experience with previous PPC campaigns. Unfortunately my positive mood did not hold out until the end, in fact I now wished this post had been named “16 most common PPC mistakes web marketers make,” because the 17th point is not very good advice at all.

In points 8, 9 and 16 Mr. Mor makes it a point to discuss the importance of protecting your firm’s name from your affiliates, and from your competition. This advice, although obvious to most business people, is very sound. Your firm’s name and the proper branding of that name are of paramount importance in the marketing world, online or otherwise. If your competition is using unethical marketing tactics to steal clients and benefit from your firm’s brand, or if they attempt to purposefully damage your firm’s reputation or brand image without cause, then by all means firms need to do all they can do, including taking legal action, to stop these competitive threats. I have no problem with this advice.

However, point 17 is so misguided and potentially dangerous, it severely reduced the quality of the post. Here is the problem, in his last point Mr. Mor suggests firms bid on the brand name of their competitors, because “anyone searching for your competitor could easily be your customer instead” (ghastly logic) and “Most of the time the ROI on those keywords is excellent” (Ah, we make more money, so the practice is acceptable, the good ole “Ends justify the Means argument”). What makes the whole suggestion even more preposterous is Mr. Mor explains earlier in point 8 that his firm frequently sends out “legal letters” to their competitors to stop them from continuing this type of unethical behavior. So I guess we have an acceptable double standard here, we are instructed to engage in bidding on our competitor’s brand name as a good PPC strategy, and we should make it a point to legally threaten our competitors if they attempt to do the same thing to our brands. Doesn’t sound so good to me, even with my lower than average cognitive skills. In Mr. Mor’s closing sentence, he advises “If you get a “legal letter” from the competitors and it holds water, I’d suggest comply with it.” If we get a letter, and if it holds water? I’m sorry folks, that isn’t a letter I want waiting for me in the mail box, the innumerable bills and credit card applications already in wait make the trip to the mail box miserable enough.

I get frustrated with the disconnect between the online world and the non-online business world at times. There is this maverick/old-west mentality online that continues to percolate, where obviously unethical and potentially illegal marketing strategies are employed by some with impunity. Interestingly enough, the resulting vitriol from those who are caught in their back alley practices is impossible for me to comprehend. These unscrupulous marketers know what they are doing is sinister, but they risk it anyway for a few extra bucks. How can they be so upset when they are shut down? Here is another thought… I know I personally do not want the FTC, or any other government entity, to form some sort of Internet Marketing Oversight group to start governing our every online marketing move. But if this sort of poor online marketing advice is continually doled out, and routinely implemented, then I think we should expect the involvement of the government in the future. And they will do it in the name of consumer protection, and fair trade enforcement, whether that truly be the case or not.

Just for fun, I took a second and went out and Googled “Dell Computers” and interestingly found no PPC ads for Apple or HP. I then searched for “Apple iPod” and found no PPC ads from Microsoft taking us to their Zune site. This isn’t by accident, corporate reputations are priceless. Clients aren’t fools and they will know when firms have attempted to hijack a competitor’s brand name. Yeah, you still might get a sell, and yeah, that will improve your ROI, but what has this ploy done to your company’s image? It is hard to quantify in dollar terms, but it should be considered, it is considered by image conscience Fortune 500 companies.

My advice, don’t bid on your competitors brand name in your PPC campaigns, earn your money the old fashioned way, work harder, work smarter, have a better product, offer superior customer service, run PPC ads on the long tail keywords, have fresh content on a site benefiting from solid SEO techniques. Simply put, do it the right way, stay above the murky waters of black-hat marketing tactics. You will sleep better knowing you will not be receiving a cease and desist letter from your competitor’s legal representatives for unethical behavior. Instead, if you do it the right way, you may very well get an offer from a competitor to just buy you out, because they are sick of being hammered by your squeaky-clean, brilliantly employed marketing efforts, and interestingly enough, your pristine brand will actually be worth your ridiculously high asking price.

5 comments Visited 4088 times February 15th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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SEO vs. Paid Search Marketing Clash

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 13th, 2007

If you have not gone over and read about the tussle between Dave Pasternack and SEO pros, you must take a minute to review it, it has been quite entertaining. Our friend Michael Gray has jumped in with both feet, and his post called Dave Pasternack of Did-it.com - How to Fix Your Problem is an excellent place to get a good overview of the feud. Essentially Dave Pasternack has come out saying SEO isn’t “rocket science,” and it has caused a bit of a stir among the SEO ranks. Pasternack claims he gave up SEO years ago, and now considers himself a PPC expert, and co-founded a company that consults and assists firms with their paid search campaigns. It is his opinion that SEO is a “Fix-it-Once” Task, not an Ongoing Service. It is this statement where Mr. Pasternack loses credibility. It would be nice for all of us small business owners if SEO really was a quick, one-time fix, but instead it is an ongoing and unrelenting pursuit. Not only to keep our sites optimized to do well in SERPs, but also to stay ahead of our competitors, competing for the same keywords in the same marketplace. I think this point gets glossed over by many discussing SEO. As a business person first, I personally don’t care if I show up as #1 on a SERP, I just want to show up above my nearest competitor for the same or similar products and services. Some markets will be more volatile than others, but keeping an eye on competitors, and their movements in the SERPs will always be important, and most likely a moving target. The importance of competitor watchdogging will continue to increase as more firms figure out the benefits of online marketing, and begin to implement SEO and Paid Search techniques.

So personally, I have no problem with the use of well researched, and wisely created PPC campaigns, and well managed SEO techniques; there is a place for both practices, and using one without the other doesn’t make much sense. The first step however is to SEO your site and get it optimized for the traffic which the PPC ads will hopefully drive to it. I have noticed Paid Search only gurus occasionally suggest SEO pros use “scare tactics” to encourage long-term service contracts, but unfortunately the Paid Search guys do the same thing, making site owners nervous about doing PPC campaigns themselves, and perhaps blowing their opportunity to do well. PPC isn’t too tough either, don’t let either of the two groups scare you, just realize both take some expertise, and some patience to LEARN. The main reason there is demand for these two services is they both can be overwhelming if you don’t understand them, and they are both work.

As an example, 5 years ago I use to sit down and do my business and personal taxes myself, I even used TurboTax a few times. Even with all the Turbo Tax tools it took quite a bit of time, it wasn’t rocket science, and I got the job done, but frankly I did not enjoy it, even though a sizable refund was my eventual reward. Now with a dozen different business running, and less time, and no patience for our screwed-up tax system, I love the fact I can pay someone, an expert, to do all that work for me. I could do it, but I don’t want to, I have other pressing matters more important to me. There is the SEO and Paid Search services in a nutshell. The tools, advice to do both are out there to learn, but whether someone has the time or desire to learn and do them on their own, is completely another issue. I will also admit there is some increasing art to the SEO process when we consider link baiting, creating a buzz and social marketing aspects into the online equation.

Finally, there will be times when all the SEO and Paid Search in the world isn’t going to get you anywhere, as marketing results will depend on the industry you are marketing within. One of our companies has a very nice site, it is SEOed well, and we have been running solid PPC campaigns for the most appropriate keywords in the industry, but we have gained little traffic and only a few leads a month. We know the industry well, we know our service is widely sought after, we know we are priced nicely, but we still don’t have the business we know we could have. So last week we headed Orlando to exhibit at a large trade show in this industry. The results were amazing, our service was highly sought after and well received. We heard comments like “where have you guys been?” or “we have been looking for something like this for years,” from booth visitors. So the golden question… where were our potential clients looking when they couldn’t find us? The answer… obviously not online. Make sure you know your potential clients, and where they are most likely to be searching to find you, if it isn’t online, then adjust to help them find you some other way.

The world continues to move online, and will continue to do so in an ever increasing pace, but not everyone is there yet. Marketing is the art of getting the firm’s message to potential clients, wherever they may be, even if it is offline. So getting your site’s SEO in line now will pay dividends in the future, but it may not be the end-all, be-all marketing home run you want it to be right now, especially if your future clients just aren’t online yet.

Add comment Visited 1946 times February 13th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Huh? then Ah-ha!

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 12th, 2007

After writing about Elusivity and Internet Marketing this morning, I put in the 3rd CD of the audio book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (I highly recommend it so far). Everything I was writing about, and frankly, trying to put into words, was iterated on the audio book. I’ve never taken a marketing class (or business for that matter), so maybe this is like week 3 in marketing, but it was neat to hear what I have been discovering from my own business experiences. The authors detailed how you need to create a “Huh?” in your audience, and then “fill” the knowledge or end-of-the-story gap with something that clicks and says “Ah-ha!”. I really liked the Huh? and Ah-ha!, it just stuck with me. Hopefully it sticks with you too.

Some other words related to “elusivity” include “curiosity” and “gap theory”. The idea is to help your customer realize they don’t know something, and to pique their interest enough that they can’t live without knowing, or filling that knowledge gap. A quick story I probably should have included on my post this morning… A guy walked by the booth, glanced at the vinyl poster we had up, not more than 2 seconds. He kept walking down the next row of booths. After getting past the second set of booths he turned around, and headed back to our booth. He couldn’t stand not knowing exactly what we did. We didn’t spell it out for him on our vinyl poster, and I think if we had we would have lost him. Our sign gave him something related to what he was interested in, but didn’t spell out exactly what we did (that’s hard to do on a sign anyway). Instead of trying to spell it out and fail, we grabbed his attention, he asked US what we did, and then we were able to give him a quality spiel on what we do.

A great comment by Patrick Schaber emphasized the Ah-ha point, which I was trying to do in my post but didn’t quite achieve. You CANNOT create a Huh? and then leave them hanging. They will be disappointed, disgruntled, upset, and not happy. Either that or they will just leave (that’s bad). An example in the audio book was about movies, how most of us will usually sit through even a bad movie to find out what happened (after we were given the scenario/problem/mystery). You have to resolve everything in the end, and that doesn’t mean you make me search for it on your site either, or wait until next week.

That reminds me (this is a very casual post if you can’t tell), several weeks ago there was some guy that was “retiring” from SEO and was moving into something new (a lot of you know who and what I am talking about). There was a sign up for a free 2 hour phone conference announcing what he was doing next. At first there wasn’t too much hype, but then the hype rolled in, and oh my did it roll in. No SEO, no PPC, make millions in a few days, blah blah blah blah blah. That’s when my ears shut off. I missed the phone call, but lucky for me I was put on 3 or 4 email lists. A video series was released. The first video revealed….nothing. The second video…not much more. The emails would come about how the servers were getting hit so hard, they are trying to answer everyone’s questions, and there was a countdown for signing up.

I’m sorry, but if you can’t tell me how to do it without all that hype, (a) I’m not listening, and (b) I don’t like you. Plus, if you can make so much money that way, rinse and repeat and keep doing that, don’t waste your time with hype and lackluster video after pointless video telling us about it. Oh, and if you want to know what the big deal was, it’s co-registration. Whoopee, what a breakthrough.

Add comment Visited 976 times February 12th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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Benefits of Elusivity in Internet Marketing

Posted by Michael D Jensen on February 12th, 2007

The words “elusivity” (being difficult to describe, detect, or grasp) and “Internet Marketing” are not words I would typically join in a sentence (no one else in the world either). But after doing a tradeshow this last week for one of our companies I found there are many benefits to “elusivity” in marketing, and that these could certainly be applied to Internet Marketing. And in case you’re wondering, yes I will explain the picture here…but you’ll have to read on.

The Tradeshow Experience - Learning about Elusivity

If any of you have been to a tradeshow before, you know the drill. A fancy stand-up booth lining the back of the 10′ x 10′ has exciting pictures and sometimes colors on it, usually with some buzz words and pictures of the product. The sales reps there are always standing, no chairs are even around for them to sit on. This not only saves $400 in renting chairs, but keeps the sales reps on their toes (for 4 days) so they are out in the front of the booth grabbing people’s attention with irresistible one line questions like “So what do you do?”.

Our booth was a bit different. No fancy stand-up booth, just a vinyl sign with our company name and logo, a slogan, and our domain name. We had 4 chairs and a round table, at which my partner and I sat at with our MacBook Pro’s (laptops) open. The other 2 chairs were situated for demonstrations of our software. Our booth was situated at the end of an aisle, and we lined up the vinyl banner with the aisle instead of central to our booth (in web design this would be like a “violator“).

We noticed that about 60-70% of people came by and asked us “So what do you do?”. The great majority of those were our target market, and we were able to get them to sit down for a brief demo and exchange contact information. This kept us quite busy during the tradeshow. Interestingly, it wasn’t our slogan (which has a bit of elusivity in it) as much as it was our business name (which really isn’t too elusive but not completely self-defining). It ate at people to walk by and not know what we do, especially seeing two guys typing away at their laptops not trying to hound them. Not only did we get a lot of leads, we also got a lot of work done!

The Leafy Sea Dragon

My parents and my own family went to SeaWorld before the tradeshow, you know, Shamu and the whole deal. One of the exhibits was various types of fish and sea creatures. One of them appeared at first to just be a bunch of coral and sea weed. My mom’s first reaction was to just keep walking past it, nothing moving, nothing to see. Having been familiar with this species, I pointed out to her that there was actually something living in there, the Leafy Sea Dragon (see picture). These creatures are amazing, one of the ultimates in camouflage. After realizing it wasn’t just coral and sea weed, the exhibit became all the more interesting and exciting for her. The elusivity of it makes your brain perk up and directs your attention away from whatever you were doing to this new object. Hey, that sounds like something that would be nice for Internet Marketing!

Elusivity in PPC

When writing ads for pay-per-click (PPC), our first reaction is to say everything. Obviously we don’t have enough space to do that, as you are typically limited to a title line and two text lines, plus your domain name. Instead of trying to give away everything in your ad, why not try to create a question or “wonder” in the minds of your ad readers, to first draw them into your site, but then to have the question answered and fulfilled. Now don’t lie to me in your PPC ad just to get me to click it, or else I will be upset and have negative associations with your brand. Instead, create a gap (or make us realize there is a gap) and then fill it when I come to your site. Don’t make me search for it either, it should be right there for me to find and learn about.

But how do I do that? Obviously every product/service is different. A good place to start is to identify what your customer is missing or lacking, the reason they are looking for you. Then fill the gap with how your product/service handles that, and why it is unique in its own way.

Elusivity in Search Marketing

This gets a little tougher because we can’t control it directly like PPC. You can optimize your site’s search engine snippets and create elusivity in there, if it applies. You can also do it all on one page, starting the page with grabbing their interest, creating a question that they can expect to get answered. They keep reading and hopefully go on to a sales or lead conversion.

Now certainly I am not saying that elusivity is the answer to Internet Marketing, it is one form of it. It has its place with certain parts of your audience. It can make a lasting memory of your audience’s first encounter with your product or service, by taking their brain off of its usual path and onto a “see gap/fill gap” experience.

There are obviously many other ways to benefit from elusivity. E-newsletters for example, are a great way to capture readers at the top fold of the newsletter, and get them to read on or click through.

What other ways can elusivity help in Internet Marketing?

2 comments Visited 1515 times February 12th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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