SoloSEO

Paid Links are Bad, No Good, No Bad…

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on December 13th, 2007

Michael Gray doesn’t know who I am, I don’t expect him to. We sat next to each other one day at lunch during Pubcon, he is a polite, engaging guy, with obviously tons of knowledge in SEO/SEM field. I enjoyed Michael’s many interviews on Local search, and learned much from his posts. He has earned a great deal of respect for his knowledge in this industry, no bones about it. (And here comes the but). But in his latest rant concerning Google and paid links, which was in response to Matt Cutts’ blog post about paid links, I think Michael’s perspective of the situation is just a bit too simplified. Now, I am not what anyone should consider a SEO, I am more of a SEO theorist at best. I have been learning SEO to selfishly help our businesses grow online, so I analyze SEO related, and most business related situations through my experience as a small business owner and based on basic economic principles. These lenses are the only ones I feel comfortable using when analyzing interesting business issues, just so we have established my perspective.

Michael Gray has a problem, as do many, with the apparent hypocrisy within Google. On one hand Google asks us to not buy or sell links, and to report sites which do one or both. Google tells us this will allow them to adjust a site’s rank, and relevance calculations accordingly, which needs to be done because links currently influence a site’s rank. So, in a paid linkless world, Google, in theory, would only be serving up the most relevant sites for each of our search queries. This of course is a preposterous dream, but we will leave this a discussion on another post, it still remains the stated purpose of Google’s actions.

Now to the other hand, while Google publicly denounces and punishes those dealing in paid links, they turn around and make piles of cash selling links for placement on their SERPS, as well as on other sites participating in their ad delivery system. On the surface there is definitely some cause for concern, and the appearance of impropriety is nothing short of glaring. It is this apparent conflict of interest which has Michael Gray and SEO minions riled up. “Why can Google sell links on their site, but we can’t sell them on our site?”, is their united cry. It is a good question, it is a fair question, and one I don’t think Google has quite answered completely or eloquently enough, which possibly increases the ire even more.

So from a simpleton’s business perspective, let me provide Google with a little defense fodder to this whole selling links dealio. I do not come at this as a dyed-in-the-wool Google Kool-Aid drinker, although I do use them as my primary search engine. Nor do I do this because Matt Cutts was genuinely cool to Michael Jensen and myself as we left PubCon one night. (Matt: we sincerely hope you are using and enjoying the SoloSEO swag item in good listening health.) We all enjoyed a few minutes crossing a busy street together, which in Vegas is a bonding moment, as is any other near-death experience.

The simple reason Google is trying to manage the paid link situation in this heavy-handed manner, is they are protecting their core business, that’s it… That’s the answer, nothing more to see here, move along. Now Gray suggests in his post that Google had in fact created the paid link mess, but this isn’t totally correct. Links have always been a good measure of a site’s popularity, many of us will remember all the early sites, which proudly displayed a “Links” page, I used those “referral” pages all the time. Links to companies, from companies I already trusted, made a difference to me, as I am sure they did to many. Even today, links out from trusted sites are a good referral, and lend credibility to that site. So not including the incoming links as a measure of a site’s quality would be a huge mistake for any search engine. Links must to be measured by all serious search engines attempting to deliver relevant results. And because links are beneficial to our site in terms of traffic and sales, some are willing to pay for them, that is why paid links abounds. So Google didn’t create the paid link mess, but by profiting the most through the selling of links, they definitely have the appearance of being holier than thou in their current stance. Perhaps Google and their billions don’t particularly care what we think, but I don’t think that is the base motivation behind their actions.

There is one area in this paid search mess which does concern me a bit… Google’s position on why buying links from them is ok, is based on the fact that when we buy from them, they know who we are, and they know not to pass page rank from those links, in order to keep their rankings systems pure. Here is the tricky part, if Google is squeaky clean, then the relevance and popularity of any paying client’s site should not be improved or effected, even though they are paying clients. We can only hope Google is ethical, and this is how it is handled, otherwise Google is no better than Tyco, WorldComm and Enron. Unfortunately, I know of some who now buy ads with Google, not only because they hope to get more traffic through SERPs, but also because they believe it potentially improves their organic positioning on the SERPs. So, in an odd way, Google actually profits from the appearance of a possible impropriety, most likely based on the current corporate climate, in which many of us just assume big businesses are greedy, lying, cheating, crooks. Pretty sad.

Ultimately we may never know if there is a benefit to a site’s ranking through advertising with Google, this is a part of Google’s “secret sauce” and protected as proprietary. So unless someone from the Google inside commits corporate hara-kiri, and tells the world how it all works, we will never know. So, in a perfect search world, paid links to Google would not have an effect on a site’s organic position within Google’s SERP, this practice, in principle, would be going against their core business model of providing the most relevant, naturally occurring search results for every search query.

For me personally, I understand why Google sells advertising… Because they can, and because it makes them loads of the green. We all would do the same if we could, in this regard the Google haters are being a bit ingenuous. I also understand why Google tries to manage the paid links conundrum, in a sense, to protect and improve their ability to provide their clients with the best search experience possible. We can only hope Google is being responsible in keeping the two practices mutually exclusive, and not influencing results based on their paying client list. It is also easy to understand why many are suspect of Google, there have been so many instances of corporate greed in the past, that many are cynical, rightly so. But not to worry, history has shown us again and again that business is the survival of the fittest. And the fittest companies are the ones that do things ethically and honestly for the long term. Eventually the law, or competition puts the fakers/takers in jail, or out of business. It has always been that way, it doesn’t matter the market, it doesn’t matter the product or service, and it doesn’t matter the company, eventually time runs out. We will know at some point in the future if Google is doing what they claim to be doing, or if they are truly are as slimy as some believe them to be. In the meantime, while Google carries their big stick, we might want to think twice before buying links, not everyone at Google is as pleasant as we found Matt to be.

9 comments Visited 1413 times December 13th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Specialized Search is Simple Economics

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on November 29th, 2007

There has been much speculation about how personal and local search, which I term “Specialized Search,” will affect search marketing strategies in the future. Although it feels recent, the discussion of more specialized search systems really started to heat up back in 2004, when Google’s Sergey Brin made comments concerning Google’s foray into Specialized Search technologies. Bill Slawski, our industry’s legal expert, has done a masterful job of following the patents issued to the search engines for various new personalized search techniques, and he asks insightful questions on how these patented technologies might affect search in the future. Bill helps me think, which isn’t easy. Bill’s SEO by the Sea blog has a has a full category on the personalization of search. It is worthy of your time if you want to better understand the great strides search engines are making to innovate to further customize the search experience for every individual client.

Additionally, Michael’s post of yesterday entitled: Local Search is Changed Forever - Now Google Knows Where You Are also discusses the amazing trends in local search. None of us should be surprised that the search engines are going to try to improve the search experience for their clients, it is basic economic principles at work here. We have to remember that Google and Yahoo! are competitors, I would say fierce competitors, and if these companies do not evolve, and implement new & better search strategies, then they run the risk of losing market share, and eventually becoming irrelevant over time. I don’t think either company will allow themselves to become the next Excite.com in the world of search.

There are many who believe Google and to a lessor extent Yahoo! are out to kidnap our personal preferences, and somehow use this “personal” data for some unsightly purpose in the future. Yes, even in search we have our own group of conspiracy theorists. I have read blogs recently of some who feel tricked that Google has been modifying their search results, based on their personal search histories and their locations, without their permission. While I am not one that wants to lose any personal freedoms, if while I’m using Google’s service, Google saves my search history to improve my search experience in the future, it seems like a pretty good business decision in my mind. Nothing overly Orwellian about it, just a vendor trying to better help a client, and fight off competition. If I am more satisfied with my search results, then the chances of me moving to another search engine is greatly reduced. That is pretty much what all of us business people are attempting to accomplish, develop a loyal customer base, and do all we can to prevent them from going elsewhere. If we aren’t moving forward in the marketplace, we are being left behind.

So as search results become more based on individuals, what effect will that have on SEO, and SEO strategies? It is an interesting question. If each of us are getting manipulated/personalized results based on our personal search history, then how can the SEOs “prove” their worth to their clients? I mean if we can’t see our sites rocketing up the SERPs, and show our friends, how will we know what we have paid out has been it? Or how will be know our personal SEO efforts are effective? While the benefits of SEO work may not be as obvious and homogeneous on the SERPs, we can be hopeful the resulting traffic driven to our sites will become more qualified, and our conversion rates will hopefully climb a bit. We have heard many times, we should rather have 10 people visit with 5 people purchasing, then 1000 visiting with only 1 purchase (assuming we aren’t a big Adsense site).

I believe specialized search will also increase the importance and necessity for more online competitive analysis strategies. Michael and I have been discussing other competitive analysis tools to add to SoloSEOs current tool set to further improve our clients abilities to understand what the competition is up to, especially when compared side-by-side to their own site’s performance. Then clients will be able to use the trends these metrics provide to accurately measure how effective their SEO strategies are within their competitive marketplace. Competitive analysis will provide more of the confirmation we need on our SEO strategies, especially as SERPs continue to morph to meet the personalized needs of search clients. It will be exciting. I will be interested to see if specialized search might possibly give those who didn’t get out online as quickly as they had wished, an increased ability capture new specialized clients by focusing on long-tail keyword phrases relevant to their specific market.

It is going to be fun to watch and be apart of all the fast approaching changes, and it will be fascinating to see which of us figures out how to capitalize on the new opportunities of Specialized Search.

We are looking forward to meeting many of you at PubCon in a few days, I did enjoy it last year. Please travel safe and enjoy. As an alum of UNLV, I know from personal experience, Vegas can be great, and Vegas can be absolute crap. I hope the former Vegas for all of you. If you to make is to PubCon, please come up and say “hi,” we are going to be handing out some SoloSEO SWAG, which is pretty cool. Quantities are limited. I may resemble one, but I am not a pack mule. )

Add comment Visited 1920 times November 29th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Image Isn’t Everything, But It Is Something.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on October 11th, 2007

Taking a look at the corporate logs in the image to the left, how do you feel about those brands? Do you feel anything? Much in marketing is focused on influencing the public’s perception of our companies, our products and our brand. We want others to think our products/services are high in quality, a good value, safe, reliable, fun, entertaining, satisfying, or simply the best. So how is this done online, is it different when compared to more traditional ad mediums? For, example in TV commercials we have just about seen it all, from diet cola commercials, which appeal to our hip and healthy side, to luxury cars like Lexus, BMW and Mercedes, which tout their extreme quality, and attempt to impress us with their prestige. All this presentation created simply to influence our perception toward these brands. And with TV being so visual, the advertiser can use all sorts of techniques to spin their products in a very positive light. Many are now wondering if TV advertising is as effective as it use to be? I’ll bet there are a million or two Tivo owners who will tell you it probably isn’t, but that is a discussion for another day, but does suggest a need to come up with other methods to improve our corporate image.

We all know TV ads aren’t real life, and although I doubt there is any girl that choose to hang out with a guy because of the type of diet cola he drank, at least I hope not, we all know some people drink certain brands of soda or diet soda because they believe they are being perceived by others to be cool, sophisticated, wealthy, discerning, or concerned with their health, etc. Many choose to use these brands because of the brand image they have in their own head, will hopefully be identified by others as the product is consumed. My wife loves Diet Coke, and I mean LOVES it. She says it tastes better than all the other diet beverage choices out there, without question. I personally disagree, I think Diet Coke tastes like licking dirt off a pitching wedge. She also thinks Diet Coke portrays a certain image, say of an attractive blonde girl cruising along a beach-side path on roller skates, bopping to the music as she enjoys her Diet Coke. But while I like the commercial quite a bit, and it matches the image of my wife well, I personally still see Diet Coke as the drink of choice for attendees of a 1929 high school reunion, held last weekend, and not the drink of anyone remotely hip. So this ad, although excellent in my opinion, has not changed my perception of Diet Coke one it, or its brand, it is still yuck, but many others feel differently. So when we work on our brand, we attempt to positively influence as many as we can, knowing full well we can’t change everyone’s perception, and that is ok.

Online we obviously don’t have the ability to visually create an image as well as a TV commercial can, although with YouTube and others we are getting closer. So we instead have to rely on other marketing opportunities to influence potential clients. In search marketing, our prestige and our perceived value are currently tied to how well we do in the SERPs. Many of us know that being on page 1 of a SERP isn’t necessarily the best way to determine if the particular product or company is the best (no offense to Google and Yahoo). And we know a high ranking it is not a guarantee of a good quality product or of excellent customer service either, but there is no doubt we notice the sites on page 1 more quickly, and we take a look at sites on page 1 more often than potentially better products and sites buried on subsequent SERP pages. So in a sense, the work of SEO directly influences the perception potential clients and the public will have on our businesses, at least initially. If we are ranking well on the results page, then we will be perceived as being market leaders, the most popular, the most cutting-edge, the highest quality, whatever, whether it is reality or not. The better we do on the SERPs, the better we will be initially perceived, and they more clients will visit our site. Then it is up to us to make sure our sites are designed well enough to deliver what client needs. We need to ensure visitors can easily find the information they need, that they feel comfortable with us, and we need to be sure they can easily order when it is time to purchase. Online, SEO should be seen as our ability to influence the initial perception of searching clients. SEO can be online marketing and online PR, all wrapped up into process, and really our opportunity to make a better first impression.

When considering the benefits of SEO, we need to remember that through the SEO process, we are improving the perception of our companies to potential clients. It isn’t just a matter of gaining more traffic to our sites, it is a matter of promoting and influencing the long-term image of our company and products. If we can make them initially believe we are great, then prove it to them with our site, products and customer service, then we have won a tough online battle.

Add comment Visited 972 times October 11th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Is a Customer Ever Wrong?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on September 24th, 2007

The simple answer is yes, there are times when the customer is wrong, but that doesn’t really matter much in the end. We still have to deal with the situation and attempt to make the most of it, while not further upsetting and potentially losing a client. This can be very tough for some, I fortunately have wonderful partners that are very kind, and considerate, probably to a fault, and they handle most of the customer service needs around here. But I had an interesting experience last weekend, which made me think (I know, I know, finally the dummy thinks).

My wife and I had the opportunity to get out of town, and head up to Salt Lake City on Saturday night. Now it isn’t too big a deal, Salt Lake City is only 40 miles North, but it is just nice to get away from a college town, and the mass hysteria that occurs on the weekends here, especially homecoming weekend. We decided to get reservations at ZTejas at The Gateway, and were looking forward to a good meal, and a change of atmosphere. Well, it didn’t turn out quite the way we had envisioned it.

We were sat quickly enough, even a few minutes before our reservation time, so that was great. Unfortunately our table was by a window, which meant my wife was going to be cold (she is known to bump up the thermostat from a warm by manageable 72 degrees, to sometimes over 75, you guys know what I mean, way too hot). We ordered our food, and were served a Diet Coke for my wife, which is essentially the only liquid she has consumed for the last 20 years of her life, and a water for me, as I have recently got off the diet soda wagon. Although, had I known there was an apparent water shortage in SLC, I would have milked that tiny drink of water like crazy, because we didn’t see refills for 20 minutes after that, and the ZTejas cuisine can prove to be very spicy.

The appetizer came quickly enough, but it was missing the guacamole, which is just unpardonable in my simple mind. And we didn’t even get that nice warm corn bread everyone else seemed to be enjoying, we were totally forgotten. In all fairness to our server, she was sat 3 large parties all at once, so she was obviously crazed, but it would have been nice if she had just popped in as she was running around to tell us she hadn’t forgotten us. The real problem in my mind was the manager, who busy walking around with his hands in his pockets, and not helping this server out even a little bit. He glanced at our table, and others every once and awhile, and even with empty glasses in view, he did nothing. He could have at least been yelling out encouragement to the server, as he stood there motionless, it would have been something, but instead he played statue. Anyway, it was quite a humorous, but frustrating display of inept management, and incredibly poor organizational protocol. The server needed help, due to the over-seating in her section, and management apparently did not have a back up plan to deal with this sort of situation. I believe in the restaurant biz, this sort of thing must happen all the time, so the lack of a back-up plan seems remote, so it was probably just lack of effort and an unwillingness to put the plan to action that caused the problem, and this server’s whole section suffered because of it.

When our server finally got things semi under control, and worked her way back to us, we explained our frustration. Our mouths were burning, and our throats were dry, no guac, and no cornbread. My wife usually is the one who expresses our upset on our behalf, as I look down at the table and remain quiet. I don’t like to complain, I find it troubling. I am convinced that if I do complain, Karma will make sure I deal with upset clients at work all the next day. And I don’t handle upset clients well, so I try to avoid them at all cost. Fortunately my partners are quite good at calming situations down, where I tend to escalate them. At least I know some of my limitations, and it takes more than my fingers and toes to count them all.

Once our concerns had been expressed, we quickly had refilled drinks, hot corn bread, (unfortunately it was after we had finished our food) and a promise that the manager would come over to speak with us. My wife then informed me I would be speaking with the manager, as she was not happy with my head down, quiet tactic, as it made her feel I was not supporting her. When the manager came over I decided to try something new… I simply remained calm and explained to him our disappointment, that we had driven 40 miles to have a nice meal, through the driving rain, and it was just too bad it wasn’t as good as we thought it would be. The manager was obviously ready for a fight, so I think my calm comment kind of threw him off a bit, he stumbled when he spoke, and eventually said he was sorry, offered to “buy us a dessert,” (why do they say this, he isn’t paying for anything, we all know he isn’t), and offered to take the price of the appetizer off our bill, which was very considerate and appropriate response in my mind. He then quietly walked away. Our free dessert came quickly, we didn’t get to choose it, and unfortunately it had coffee flavored ice cream, which just plain tastes like dog breathe, so we didn’t eat it. But in a few more minutes the manager returned, he again told us he was sorry, and he then gave us a $50 gift certificate for the next time we made it up to SLC. I was impressed, he didn’t have to do that, I surely wasn’t expecting it, the free dessert and appetizer seemed an appropriate response for the trouble we experienced, so this was way above my expectations, and I look forward to going back to ZTejas someday. That was not the way I was feeling just a few minutes earlier.

When he came over the second time, I was very interested in what he said. He told us that he had thought about it, and if he had arranged to take his wife out, and driven 40 miles in the rain, looking forward to a nice meal, and the same thing had happened to him, he would have been upset. And that made sense to me. In business things aren’t always going to work out, there will be clients that aren’t totally pleased with our service, or our products, and we are going to have to deal with the upset. We have learned as a company that quickly taking responsibility for the problem, even if it is just our portion of the problem, and quickly apologizing, is by far and away the best way to diffuse the situation. It is amazing how quickly a rational discussion can begin, once a sincere apology is made. As customers, I would suggest we try to remain calm when something isn’t quite up to our standards, and attempt to make the problem we have personal to the person we are talking with. If they can get an inkling of how it might feel, if it were them experiencing the trouble, then I would suggest the eventual outcome will be much better for both the participants. The customer will get resolution without an increase in blood pressure, and won’t feel the need to kick the dog, yell at their spouse and kids just vent their pent up frustration, and the provider will keep a client and better comprehend just how their clients feel when things don’t go well with the service. This understanding might cause a provider to reanalyze their business model, and potentially make changes to better the company’s product or service. I will say this; a soft answer does seem to turn away wrath, and apparently it also gets you an extra $50 from a manager who originally didn’t seem to care about any of us, not too shabby an outcome.

Add comment Visited 736 times September 24th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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Hey Businesses… Its about Blogging time.

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on September 7th, 2007

A good friend of mine, Thayne Peterson, called up yesterday and asked what he should do with his website to just help it perform a bit better. As you can imagine we get that question quite a bit around here, especially now that more people have kind of figured out what SoloSEO is about. This friend owns an auto dealership in Provo, UT (free link alert) and deals mostly in high-quality, used BMWs. He also has a repair shop as well, where they specialize in repairing most German made cars (this needs to be stated more clearly on the website). He, like many of us, just wants to be a bit more visible online.

In our conversation he mentioned he was considering signing up for a local online business directory, and perhaps purchasing some advertising on their site. He wondered if I thought it was a good idea, so I took a look. After some initial poking around, it was soon obvious that signing up was free, and the site existed solely on ad space it sold on the site. So I had no problem with him signing up, at least it is a new link to him, and this directory is well put together and has quite a comprehensive overview of local business, organized by category. I didn’t tell him if I thought purchasing an ad on this site was a good move or not, I don’t know enough about this directory’s traffic mix, or his business to understand if online advertising will provide a high enough ROI to make the ad price worth the investment. I will leave that decision to him.

But after a quick review of his site, I just gave him a few ideas that I think will help its performance in the search engines. First off, he does an excellent job of keeping the inventory of current cars up to date. As soon as they receive a new car, they clean it up and takes some nice pictures of the car, and then put those up with a simple description of each car on the site. I suggested that they should spend a bit more time on creating content for each car, focusing more on some keywords they are targeting, as well as the specifics of each car. These keywords should come from what they feel their strengths are, with local references included, like Provo, UT, Northern Utah, 40 South of Salt Lake City, UT, as examples. Additionally, I would have them use SoloSEO tools to analyze other local automotive sites doing well in the search engines, and then start targeting those keywords as well. Finally, they should also make sure the photos for each car are labeled clearly, and using an occasional keyword here and there, in a picture description, isn’t going to hurt rankings either.

Once a car is sold, they currently take the content and the pictures of that car off the site. I think this is a mistake many of us make. Rather, I would suggest they create a sold page, or past inventory page, then organize all the cars by model and year on this sold/directory page. Keep all that content written about each car, and the descriptive photos for each in play for the search engines. If they spend time creating the content, then they should continue benefitting from it. Plus, it might help potential clients find a model of car they are looking for. Thayne does a great job finding cars according to a potential buyer’s specifications. He did this for me, and it worked out great. So, if a potential buyer found a car on Thayne’s site by browsing the past inventory, which takes no time from Thayne’s sales people (truly a major benefit of any well conceived site), and Thayne gets a new client to work with, along with all the specs he needs to find a similar car, it is a win/win for everyone.

Next, I would suggest they start a company blog, it is another easy way to add content. We of course love WordPress Blogging system, we use it ourselves, and highly recommend it to everyone. On the Independent Import’s blog I would have them blog about sales they are having on certain cars, about automotive tips, about information on recalls, about new performance parts or options to “pimp our rides,” and even about the new innovations BMW is coming out with all the time. The automotive industry is one of constant innovation and change, and this provides excellent and frequent topics for a blog. Keep the blog fresh, with one or two posts a week at least, and also let his current and new clients know about the blog. Many new car owners are passionate about their cars (especially BMW owners), and reading new info about their brand of car and possible improvements/options, is very interesting and will increase business. I’ll bet Thayne could get quite a good subscription base fairly quickly, I know I would sign up.

I would guess there are many of us who feel like we need to do better online. Our site is there, but we need it to perform better, if at all and bring us some new clients. This is most easily done through search. Look for ways to increase your content, adding new pages, and a blog. Then write about products, changes in the industry, and keep your content, don’t ever throw it away. It may need to be tweaked or placed on an archives page of some sort, but you worked hard to create it, let it continue to work for you, it will make a difference in search engine rankings. As far as all the free advice to Thayne, I will take it on trade for a M3 convertible, black… of course.

1 comment Visited 1656 times September 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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It’s All About the Experience

Posted by Michael D Jensen on September 4th, 2007

Marketing, in whatever form, is all about the experience. This is the why behind how link bait and viral marketing work.

We recently moved to Southern Utah, and in our family we like to be tourists everywhere we go, even where we live. We heard about these dinosaur tracks, so we set out to find them. We had a map that had directions that appeared pretty specific, even down to having an extra digit after the decimal point of how many miles from point X to point Y. With my iPhone (sweet Maps app), GPS on the car, and our handy dandy map, I thought we’d be there in 20 minutes, see the tracks, and be on our way to the next historic site. Instead, we had a safari adventure in our minivan, with 3 young kids in the back, hunting for dinosaur tracks in 100 degree weather, on a dirty bumpy road, that lasted two and a half hours.

Now if you are still a kid like I am (and like my kids are), this was awesome. We turned down a road which ended up being more of a 4-wheeler road, having to turn around and backing into a cactus. We saw a few guys off the road, but after approaching them on foot I realized they were carrying weapons. Luckily they were harmless and gave us some hints as to where to seek the dinosaur tracks. We traveled down the road for what seemed like an eternity, all the while enjoying the beautiful Utah desert and the sweet sound of kids nagging each other. Finally, a sign; of course it was 3 inches by 3 feet with the words “Dinosaur Tracks” in a single column, in white and brown (camouflage), and a small arrow pointing the way. We turned and kept looking, another 3″ x 3′ sign. We found the parking lot, and another 3″ x 3′ sign. We walked a ways and finally came to the end of our hunt, with about 10 footsteps from dinosaurs, engrained in stone for us to stare at in amazement. This ain’t plaster of paris my friends, these are dinosaur tracks.

So, if you’re still reading, hopefully you’ve imagined our experience and smiled at least a tad. It was a blast, and tucking my kids in tonight they remember our trek of finding dinosaur tracks. What would this have been like had this rock with the tracks been cut out and taken to my local museum? We could have walked right past them. We wouldn’t have spent more than 2 or 3 minutes looking at the tracks. A portion of the visitors to the museum probably would miss the tracks altogether. And when those kids were tucked, I guarantee they wouldn’t remember the dinosaur tracks.

It’s all about the experience. There is a fantastic article written on the topic titled The Experience is the Marketing by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II. This is the inner workings of link bait and viral marketing, it is the experience the user undergoes. The experience may not last two and a half hours like my dinosaur track safari, but if the user has a memorable experience, the marketing worked. The article gives several examples, such as “The American Girl Place”. It’s not your typical toy doll store. Parents take their daughters with doll in hand to get the doll’s hair done ($20), get their picture taken together ($21.95), watch a theatrical production together ($25), and to have dinner together ($18). Yes, you can buy a new doll there, but it’s the experience that drives thousands each year, and millions in revenue, not the dolls.

In the online world, we don’t have the advantage of a physical setting to create an experience. We do, however, have many forms of medium to create an experience.

Online Mediums for Creating an Experience
First, your design and usability is the first part of the experience. Is your design clean, does it speak to your audience (high-end consumers, women, older folks, college kids, etc), are products easy to find with available details?

Second, do you offer more than just product? What about a section of all the crazy ways your product has been used (think Duck brand Duct Tape), or a photo blog of people wearing your product in different locales (like Beast Clothing)? What about an application that helps people with some aspect of your product or service, that they find useful (like our Link Search Tool). What about a viral video (think Diet Coke & Mentos) that showcases or includes your product, or is a captivating commercial that makes it viral?

Tapping into your Audience
Just because your marketing medium isn’t a physical building, it doesn’t mean you can’t tap into the physical senses of your audience. You can appeal to emotions, appetites, feelings, memories, hopes, and vanity. There’s no step by step how to and no online experience generator to accomplish this. But there is your innovation, and the imagination of your team and company.

Get Started and Create an Experience
To start, read the article The Experience is the Marketing. It’s a great jump start to making an experience for your audience, which is the ultimate in branding and marketing.

1 comment Visited 1000 times September 4th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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When the First Result Is Not the Best Result

Posted by Michael D Jensen on August 27th, 2007

You have probably tried Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button before. But what if you based your business and purchasing based solely on getting the first result of a query?

I recently met with some folks that found their SEO company based on the first result of the query “search engine optimization”. The results have obviously changed since then (now its Wikipedia). Their experience with the SEO company was not a positive one: a lot of money paid for next to nothing.

The problem with relying on the first result has several components:

1) Many first results are not naturally boosted to the first result. Some of these make money just on your visit (and click), others may actually do sell the product or service you are looking for. Just because they are good at ranking high for that keyword doesn’t mean they are good at making their product or doing their service.

2) Your query may be the problem. You may be looking for one thing, and your query thinks you are looking for something else.

3) Comparing products and services is essential to good business and purchasing practices. Even the search engine result snippets can be a first level filter, telling you from the meta description or content of the page more information related to your keyword than just the page title.

That said, it’s still everyone’s dream to be number one in the search results. Why? Because you do get looked at, and you get clicked on, and your chances are better for gaining that customer than if you’re lower on the results page, let alone the next page and beyond.

Just don’t make a habit of hiring people because they are the first result.

2 comments Visited 938 times August 27th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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When a Good Domain Name is Bad

Posted by Michael D Jensen on August 21st, 2007

I just moved to Southern Utah (hence the lack of posts). We found a nice local furniture store, Boulevard Home Furnishings, that everyone calls “The Boulevard”. They seem to do everything right, the perfect furniture store. They have car shopping carts for the kids, candy for the kids, bottled water for the adults, sales people are friendly, large selection, good deals, a great return policy, etc. But there is one thing they missed the boat on, a good domain name.

Their domain BuySmartToday.com goes along with the store slogan “Buy Smart”. Initially you think, okay not too bad of a domain. Not too long, easy to spell, even a decent keyphrase (buy smart). But, I found myself googling for the store every time I wanted to look at their website because their slogan never stuck, especially their domain. It was too far removed from the name of the actual store as everyone knows it and refers to it as. Unfortunately the company doesn’t even own the domain for the full name of the store, BoulevardHomeFurnishings.com, although thats a handful to type.

Whilst doing a Google search, I found another domain for the store that points to the hard to remember one: blvdhome.com. Now we’re getting somewhere. The next day I found myself remembering this one even more than the actual one, because it has an association to the name of the store.

Lesson learned? While having a domain for one of your keywords is great, if it doesn’t associate enough with the name of your company, product, or service — enough to remember it — then it may not be the domain to go with.

5 comments Visited 1229 times August 21st, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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SEO - Vital to Small Business

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on August 7th, 2007

To small business owners, SEO cannot be seen as the “end all - be all” to their potential success, but it rightfully should be considered a “must do” in order to maximize their full business potential. Based on our own situation, and finally deciding ourselves we needed to spend time on SEO, we now understand that getting started in SEO can be a bit intimidating, and very confusing without the right information. The SEO world tends to speak in their own tongue, and their language wasn’t developed, or taught in any business classes I attended. These new terms, whether it was meant to be this way or not, seem to have created a bit of a “barrier to entry,” to use a term we are more familiar with. Essentially the SEO industry created an illusion of “if we don’t know the terminology, it will be difficult to understand or perform SEO, and even tougher to do it well.” I felt the same way at first, but that perception is simply not true. SEO done the right way, without all the tricks and tinkering (which isn’t all that effective anymore anyway), is actually pretty straight forward. Just as simple as learning about credits and debits in Accounting or how supply and demand affect pricing in Economics. Not too tough to understand with a little reading and some hands-on exercises.

So if SEO is important, and we can learn it, how much time should we spend on SEO as a small business owner? It is an excellent question, and ultimately depends on how much business a firm hopes to bring in through their online efforts. For example, if a firm has in mind that in 12 months they would like to have 50% of their sales coming from online sources, and they currently only enjoy 5% of total sales from the site, then they should probably spend a considerable amount of time working on the site, making sure all the pieces are in place, so not only will the site’s visibility improve, but potential clients will be happy with what they find. Conversely, if this firm wants only 50% of their sales from online sources, but they now enjoy 60% of total being online generated, then they should focus more attention on more traditional forms of marketing and advertising until this ratio changes.

To get started in SEO, I would recommend just setting aside an hour a day to dive in. At first start just by learning about SEO, either from some pretty good books on the topic here and here, or through a number of blogs we recommend to our readership, namely: Michael Gray (GrayWolf), Todd Malicoat (StuntDubl), Lee Odden (Online Marketing Blog), Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), and Brian Clark (CopyBlogger). These books and blogs will provide good insight and instruction on the ins and outs of all aspects of SEO.

Once one has a basic grasp of SEO, they really should get themselves an account with SoloSEO, in order to put this knowledge to use, using the most comprehensive set of SEO tool on the web. Much like exercises in Accounting and Economics, actually using the tools, and seeing the results of your work, drives home the SEO concepts, and puts the finishing touches on the learning process. Through working with SoloSEO’s tools, a solid understanding of the pillars of SEO, namely keywords, links and content will form, and SEO will then seem not only doable, but pretty simple.

So once we understand what SEO “is,” then it is time to really understand our industry online, and review what our competitor’s are up to. This online Competitive Analysis can also be done using some of SoloSEO’s tools and reports. We must remember we are competing within a different marketplace, with new competitors, and how they have positioned their sites online, could and should influence how we position and optimize our sites today and in the future. There is not a pre-determined set of guidelines at this point for SEO, no matter what some might say, much of what we need to do to compete most effectively online will be determined by what our competitors have done and will do in the future. While the process of SEO is standardized, the focus of our specific SEO strategy will need to be flexible to face the challenges put forth by our online competitors. If we watch what they do, and manage our online SEO accordingly, then we can keep pace or outpace what they are attempting to do, and better our online exposure.

In my mind there isn’t a business out there today which cannot benefit from an online presence, especially a site that is well prepared, and skillfully promoted. Small business owners need to take every advantage, use every possible tool and strategy available, to insure their eventual, or continued success. I can think of nothing more vital, more accessible and more easily implemented (not to mention more affordable) than SEO. A site which runs well, and effectively targets the right potential clients, promotes a firm’s image in a positive way, while making sales, even while we sleep, or while we play golf (not that anyone would do this during business hours). Take the time to get to know SEO and you will quickly understand just how big your little company can become, and that realization can be quite jolt.

2 comments Visited 1615 times August 7th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

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If You Want Customers, Don’t Scare Them Away

Posted by Michael D Jensen on June 21st, 2007

Many of us in the Internet Marketing world may not use mass physical mailings very often, but they are a very traditional form of marketing. Note the back of this mailing I received the other day. You might first notice it has a rip in it. Yes, that was my first instinct after seeing what you may not notice with this small image. Yes, the envelope flap is actually PRINTED onto the envelope to make it look like an envelope with a flap.

Was there something important inside? I will never know. I don’t know who it was from or what the contents were, but once I saw the fake envelope flap I knew it was worthless.

We can easily scare people away from becoming a customer, or even potentially being a customer (i.e. me reading the document inside this letter), in many different ways. Here are a few to think about:

1) Not delivering the expected content. Example: A PPC ad that says “Dining Room Furniture” but after you click you go to a super furniture warehouse, where you then have to find the dining room furniture. Another example, your ad says you have a certain product but you don’t at all.

2) Worthless content. Having content that doesn’t even make sense, or just as worse has poor grammar/spelling, or is scraped from some other website and claimed to be your own.

3) A long ad page for what appears to be a decent product but that uses lame marketing gimmicks to attempt to convince me that my money is worth it, all the while making me shake my head in disgust that people actually believe and buy this kind of stuff.

Seth Godin wrote a book called All Marketers Are Liars that is a fantastic read for anyone who owns their own company, runs a business, or is working on branding themself or their blog. He talks about telling authentic stories, even if they end up making the customer tell themselves a lie. I highly suggest you read the book, or get the audio book. This mass mailing was not authentic from the start, it was a total fake. At least make me open it to find out it is a scam.

What are some other things that scare you away immediately? What is something you are doing on your sites that scares your customers away?

1 comment Visited 1327 times June 21st, 2007 Michael D Jensen

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