Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

Puppy's Picks - SES Coverage 12/03/08

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:07:41 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don't have to. From an influx of new search marketing business to a comprehensive guide to non-profit search marketing, find out which articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

I got a chuckle out of Mike Moran's post over at Internet Evolution this week. Mike talks about an influx of calls he's receiving for consulting work and just how easy it's been to "sell" his services lately. It's a trend I'm seeing as well. I've only just reentered the consulting space this winter and I'm noticing the same trends. What's really interesting to me is the number of companies who simply want to stop LOSING customers. (i.e. they're not even looking for gains, just stability.)

If you are one of those folks who thinks your conversion rate has an impact on the Quality Score of your Google AdWords campaign, you may want to read a post over at The Adventures of PPC Hero today. Amber puts this myth to rest and points to the official word from Google. She goes on to explain how click thru rate does impact your Quality Score and then offers up some tips on increasing it.

If you've been using Flickr as an SEO tactic, you may want to be on the watch for vanishing accounts. While the Flickr TOS has always spoken out against use of the service for commercial purposes, word is they're finally starting to crack down a little harder. Richard Burckhardt has a post over at Search Engine Journal talking about his own experience with the new crack downs. I still expect businesses who are legitimately adding to the value of the community will be fine, but we'll see how things go.

Aaron Wall does that thing he does so well and offers up an absolute boat load of great search engine marketing info for non-profits at SEO Book this week. From the basics of optimization and keyword research to social media strategy, public relations and fundraising, Aaron offers up a TON of fantastic content that will put any non-profit in SEO seventh heaven.

Check out our small business news site.

SEO Sales Spammers Make the Rest of Us Look Bad But We Should Keep Marketing Anyway

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:01:17 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Unlike many in our industry I'm not against what some consider annoying forms of advertising and marketing. I don't have a problem with cold calling, I don't think all unsolicited emails are spam and I don't think there is anything wrong with direct mail.

Many of these things are frowned upon in the SEO industry, and I understand why. It's because there has been an abundance of "SEO" companies that engage in these methods, perform crappy service and ultimately rip people off. Every industry has its thieves. The ones in the SEO world have created a black mark that makes the entire industry look bad and has caused many in our industry to frown on legitimate forms of advertising.

Before I go any further, let me state I'm not for blind cold calling or email spamming. Good marketing via direct mail is highly targeted, not just sent to random addresses. The same holds true for cold calling and email marketing. Good and proper marketing rules must be followed if you want your business to succeed long term.

Bad Email Marketer, Bad!

Let's start with examples of the bad. Remember back when you used to get all those reciprocal link requests via email? Probably not hard to do, especially since you probably received one yesterday. Personally, I'm amazed people still do this. Of course they are getting smarter...sort of. Maybe not. Now they start the emails out with "This is not spam," or "We are not spammers." (Uh, just saying something doesn't make it true.)

You can usually spot these generic link request emails because they are sent to "info," "webmaster" or some other generic email address for your domain. Once you start reading them, you immediately begin to hear about "the value" of trading links. (Perhaps they missed the memo explaining that non-targeted links have no value to you or your visitor.) Participating in non-targeted link exchanges like the ones that show up in your email is sort of like trading in a Ford Pinto and expecting to receive a Lexus in return.

Another type of junk email that has become a blight on the SEO industry are the ones telling you a "site analysis" has been performed for your site. These messages are mass generated and aim to convince site owners their web sites are sub-par in the eyes of the search engines. Our clients get these all the time and often send them my way asking for an explanation of why someone else things their SEO isn't right. These emails are easy to refute; we simply point out to the client the keywords being suggested in the email are not the right keywords for the site. And then we point to the keywords they are performing strongly for and all goes back to normal.

Ring, Ring, Ring, Let's Sell You That SEO Thing

And then there are the cold calls.

I received a highly untargeted cold call from another SEO company just yesterday. I needed a pick-me-up so I decided to have a little fun with them.

The call was pretty typical. They started off telling me something was wrong with my site and how badly I needed their services. Unfortunately for them, what they thought was wrong with my site actually wasn't. This is how these calls generally go.

In fact, those doing the calling have likely never seen the site they are referencing prior to making the call, let alone having performed any kind of site analysis on. Which begs the question, if you are not even remotely familiar with someone's site, why are you calling to tell them it's all wrong? Let's get the people who know what they are talking about on the phone.

If you play along long enough, you'll find out that even the "researchers" are using automated tools and outdated information to find something basic (and often superficial) to declare that your site is all wrong.

There Has to be a Better Way

So is there a right way to do these things in our industry? Sure. SEO is no different than any other industry. We advertise in magazines, promote our businesses at conferences, and we buy ads online. These facts alone defeat any argument that says advertising is wrong. It also defeats arguments like this one: "if you were good you wouldn't need to advertise that way." How many industries do you know of where companies stop advertising because they finally have "enough" business?

There is some truth in that last statement when it comes to the spammers. If these companies were any good they wouldn't need to find bogus or false reasons to contact a company and pitch their services. They also wouldn't be promoting stale strategies that provide little benefit.

On the other hand, I'm fine with companies who market via email or cold calling in a well-thought out and knowledgeable way. It's more than just targeting your audience. You could do that with a direct mail campaign. It's about knowing your audience and interacting with them individually.

Any SEO company calling other SEO company to sell their services can clearly be written off. Any company that calls you about your site, without knowing who you are, what you sell and having a true understanding of how to improve your business should be discarded immediately. On the other hand you can often spot fairly quickly the companies that have done their research and are able to present a clear, compelling and professional case for why they called.

We all know telemarketing sucks. It doesn't matter who is doing it or why they're doing it, most people hate it. That said, cold calling doesn't necessarily have to be banned from your marketing arsenal. Walk up sales people tend to be annoying as well, but they do have their place. There are right and wrong ways to market via all channels. As with every other business, it's important to simply find the proper course before taking action.

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Do The Needful

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:59:42 -0600

by Sage Lewis

Life isn't all "puppy dogs, roses, ice cream and cake," as Sage says. Despite all the hype and increase in internet traffic for Cyber Monday, Search Engine Watch still reports a decrease in projected online advertising from 14.5% to 8.9%. As we dive into the depths of this economic downturn, Sage shares some painful examples of how the market is affecting his own company.

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Top Ten Ways To Save Money With Paid Ad Campaigns

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:12:16 -0600

by Diana Adams

Over the previous weeks I have made a deliberate point of talking about how important it is to use Keyword negatives to save money in your paid ad campaigns. I thought I would put together a quick lists of these top ten ways for saving money.

Let's keep it really simple, counting down from #10:

save money

Use negative keywords

Tune in next week for a more detailed explanation.

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How Do You Decide Who to Follow on Twitter?

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:32:57 -0600

by Mack Collier

In yesterday's post, I looked at some ways that I have used to get more followers on Twitter. Now I wanted to spin it around and look at some of the criteria I have for who I decide to follow on Twitter.

Let's say I've just clicked on an email notification from Twitter that someone has followed me. I click on the link and here's what I am looking for when I check out their profile:

1 - Their ratio of followers to people they are following. If I see it's about 1:1, that's good, but if I see that they are following 14,000 people and only have 237 following them back, that's a HUGE red flag.

2 - I check their bio. I'm hoping to get some sense of who they are and what they do.

3 - I check their avatar. Yes, a real pic of a real person matters.

4 - I check their most recent tweets. Specifically, I look for how many replies they have left. This gives me an idea of how they are using Twitter. If I see no replies on their profile, that tells me they are probably just on Twitter to broadcast (promote their own content with no/little desire to interact with other members). I prefer to follow people that are interested in conversing on Twitter.

5 - I check their location. I am currently trying to follow more people from Alabama and the South, so if their profile says this is where they are located, that's a plus.

Now what about people that I decide to follow that didn't follow me first? How do I find these people?

The quickest way for me to follow you is if I see someone that I am following talking to you. If you are engaging my friends in conversation, that's a wonderful way to get my attention, and it's like an 'endorsement'. Also, if you reply to me, that gets my attention, and makes it far more likely that I will want to follow you.

The bottom line is that I want to follow people that are on Twitter to interact with other people. That's how *I* use Twitter, you might have another system for picking the people you follow, and there's nothing wrong with that, in fact it's one of the beauties of social media, that there are so many different ways that we can all use these tools, based on our own needs.

What do you look for when deciding who you follow on Twitter?

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Not Another SEO Checklist Post!

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:14:38 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Anybody who knows me, or reads my writings long enough knows that I'm a huge fan of checklists. I'll build a checklist for just about anything. In fact, I pretty much need a checklist for just about everything I do. It's the only way I can remember to do what needs to be done.

Now, I can remember to shower and brush my teeth most mornings (I sometimes forget on rainy weekends when I plan to stay indoors.) But when it comes to things that I don't do on an absolute daily basis, well, a checklist helps me to stay organized.

I won't give you another checklist in this post, I've already provided a pretty comprehensive series of website marketing checklists. But I was reminded the other day of the value of making lists.

Recently my team and I (mostly my team) have been doing a lot of cool research with some of the free online tools that are available. Every tool we find provides a different value and benefit. But we find we often use a tool on whatever site we are working on and then somehow forget about it as we move onto other tools and other sites. Eventually we remember and start working with it again but there is no consistency.

So what's the solution? Another list.

Not a checklist, mind you, but a list of tools, their functions, and the kind of information we can get from them. Sure we could bookmark all these tools, and we do, but sometimes you need more than that. I've got so many tools bookmarked but I don't visit even a fraction of them. This is where the list comes in handy. Not only does it allow us to make our own notes, but we can also prioritize the tools based on various factors.

But most importantly, the list helps us remember. When analyzing a site and trying to figure out what to do next, referring to a handy list of options is never a bad thing.

That's the value in keeping lists. You don't ever have to rely on memory, you simply look at the next item or available option and run with it. When optimizing your website, there is a lot of free information out there. Don't just read about what to do, start building a document of the ideas and processes you generate. Build a list of strategies and note whether they work or not, the overall value and success of each. Come time, you'll have your own valuable checklist you can post for the world to admire!

Note: I figured there would be more than a few of you asking me to publish my list of tools. Honestly, it's incomplete and not ready for prime time. But perhaps this SEO Tool Library will suffice. Now go make your own lists!

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Knowing Your SEO Certification Options

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:19:09 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

On a fairly regular basis, I get emails from readers asking me about SEO Training and SEO certification. While there's no shortage of options out there for in-person training, (including our own SBMU conferences) it can be difficult to get yourself or your team to the right place at the right time. Thankfully, quite a few options are springing up for people who are looking to expand their knowledge without leaving their office.

No True SEO Certification

It's important to remember there is no true SEO Certification available right now. With no official governing body of the industry, and no standards laid out to follow...true certification would be impossible. That said, several companies and organizations are now offering certification in the sense that they'll certify you've taken and passed their courses.

There are quite a few options out there right now, but here are three I'd be most likely to recommend.

Market Motive

One of the most affordable SEO certification programs comes from the team at Market Motive. Michael Stebbins and company have bundled "practitioner certification" with their $299 a month training fee. This makes it a great option for companies looking to get ongoing online training for their staff on a variety of topics. Market Motive offers certification in:

Search Engine Optimization
Web Analytics
Paid Search (PPC)
Social Media Practices
Online Publicity
Conversion & Landing Page Optimization

The Market Motive team features some of the best and brightest in the industry and is run by my good friends Michael Stebbins and John Marshall. I've had a chance to look around their system and I'm familiar with nearly all of their faculty. They're also fast becoming the go-to option for larger companies looking to get online training for their in-house marketing staff.

If you're looking for a more intensive certification option, Market Motive also offers a "Master Consultant" certification for $3500. This option requires 30-60 days of course work and a peer review by the Market Motive faculty.

The Direct Marketing Association (DMA)

The first big player on the scene to offer SEO and SEM Certification courses was the Direct Marketing Association back in late 2006. Despite initial skepticism from some within the industry, the DMA has done an excellent job of recruiting some of the best and brightest in the industry to teach their classes.

The classes here are organized by Matt Bailey and include tracks from SEO all-stars like Lee Odden, Debra Mastaler, John Marshall, Matt Bailey, Christine Churchill and Mike Moran. That said, the DMA has made it clear they've focused on finding the best teachers for any particular topic rather than simply the most "popular" expert.

They're broken down into two levels of classes. Level I classes are designed to bring people up to speed in the all things search related. They serve as a starting point for practitioners and as "background" for business owners and directors who simply need to learn enough to make smart hiring choices. The Level II classes are designed specifically for the people who will be in the trenches doing the work themselves.

One of the nice things about the DMA classes is they're self-paced. You can work on them as you have time, follow up with the teachers via email and even rewatch the sections you don't quite feel you've got a handle on yet. Costs are not cheap. There's a $299 application fee ($399 for non DMA members) plus additional fees for each level of training. Level I classes will set you back $1599 ($1899 non-DMA) and Level II classes will set you back $1699 ($1999 non-DMA). When you get to Level II classes, you'll need to pick either an organic search or a paid search focus. If you'd like to run through both sets of classes, it will cost you an extra $750.

If you'd like to get certified in everything they have to offer, it will run you $4350-$5000. On the other hand, the DMA is one of the best known professional marketing organizations around, so there's an air of credibility that comes with having completed their course work.

Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO)

The closest thing to a governing body for the search industry is the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO). SEMPO launched their own certification program earlier this year as part of the SEMPO Institute. Courses range from around $300 to nearly $1400, depending on the topic and whether or not you are a SEMPO member. Students get a certificate of completion when they've finished the course and pass the final exam with a score of 75% of higher.

One of the key differences about the SEMPO certification program is the ability to have an entire agency "certified." Granted, the requirements are pretty light, with just 20% of an agencies search team needing to complete a single course to quality. SEMPO offers higher levels of certification as more employees from an agency take and pass SEMPO approved course work. Agency applications cost $250 annually for certification rights.

Experience is the Best "Certification"

As with most other things in life, certification is ultimately just a piece of paper from someone else saying you've learned what they wanted to teach you. While it can be handy in a professional environment, most companies will still be best served by employees who spend time in the trenches testing ideas and learning by doing. The true value in certification courses is not in the piece of paper you get, but in the quality training you can receive by learning from those who live and breathe search engine marketing on a daily basis.

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How Do You Get More Followers On Twitter?

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:19:20 -0600

by Mack Collier

As Twitter just continues to grow in popularity, more people are wanting to know how to expand their Twitter networks, and get more people to follow them. There are several different ways to do this, depending on how you use Twitter. Here's some of the things that have worked for me.

First, you have to follow more people to get more followers. Here's a site with a ton of great tools that can help you find people that share your same interests.

Second, I link to a lot of articles/blogs/studies that I come across. I spend every morning going through my feed reader, and as I find interesting posts/articles, I share them with my followers on Twitter. These tweets are then shared by my followers, and that usually results in more people following me.

Finally, the BEST way I have found to gain followers, is to participate in conversations on Twitter. Several times I have engaged in lengthy conversations on Twitter, and after the conversation ends, I can go back and see that I picked up followers almost as soon as the conversation started, and stopped adding them almost as soon as the conversation winded down. Often, others will start tweeting something like 'Guys you need to be paying attention to this conversation that @MackCollier and @JenniferLaycock are having on getting more comments on your blog!', which gets me even more followers.

There are plenty of ways that you can grow your followers on Twitter. But the above methods have worked best for me.

BTW for those of you that are wondering how much traffic Twitter can send to your blog, it probably isn't as much as you'd think. I currently have about 2,600 followers on Twitter. When I tweet a link to one of my blog posts, I might send 100 visitors in a 24-hour period to my blog from that tweet. Which is about 5% of the number of followers I have. Now if other people that are following me retweet my link, then that number can quickly multiply.

My point is, from my experience, you get more back from Twitter when you contribute more. The people that are only there to promote themselves don't seem to get much value from it. Then again, if they are only on Twitter to extract value from others, why would anyone follow them.

Tomorrow I'll look at how I decide who I follow on Twitter.

What are some of your tips for getting more followers on Twitter? BTW if you aren't already, you can follow my tweets on Twitter here.

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Puppy's Picks - SES Coverage 12/01/08

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:56:41 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don't have to. From focusing on the keys to a good community to cheap ways to catch a customer's eye, find out which articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

Some things are just meant to go together; peanut butter and chocolate, snow storms and warm fires, sky diving and parachutes. Other things go together sometimes, but do just fine on their own. Still other things can cause disaster if you keep them paired up when they shouldn't be. That's what Andrew Shotland points out in a short and sweet post titled "NoIndex, NoFollow SEO Overkill" over at Local SEO Guide. While these two tags are often paired up, they shouldn't be by default. Check out Andrew's post to see why you might regret mindlessly throwing these tags together.

In this crazy world of SEM/SEO/SMM and everything else search and social media related, there's a constant buzz about the value of viral. What many fail to realize is the best viral efforts often spring up out of a pre-existing community. It may be an organized community that already exists online, or a loose association of people with a common interest who are tied together via social media tools...either way, community is key. David Armano took a good look at the "Four C's of Community" in a column at Ad Age earlier this month.

As crazy as it seems, 2008 is already starting to wrap up. That means the team at Yahoo has put together their annual Year in Review. Yodel Anecdotal points out Britney Spears is once again the top search for the year and newcomers like Miley Cyrus and Barak Obama have stormed into the scene.

LinkedIn is by far one of the best social networking sites around for business professionals. Unfortunately, most of its users aren't taking proper advantage of it. If you signed up for an account ages ago and have done little more than build new connections, you'll want to read an article by Shelia Scarborough in this month's Bulldog Solutions. In it, Shelia talks about making the most of your LinkedIn profile and highlights underused features like Answers, Groups and Recommendations.

Steve Woodruff is guest blogging at Drew McClellan's The Marketing Minute blog this week and offers up "Five Ways to Gain Notice Without Losing Your Shirt."

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Six Keys to a Viral Message that Sticks - Part Four: Carry Credibility

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:28:44 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

Anyone who knows anything about viral marketing knows one of the primary reasons it's so effective is because the message carries the credibility of those who share it. While we may not be willing to listen to a message from an advertiser, we're nearly always willing to listen to a message from friends and family. Of course there's a challenge in getting your viral campaign to pick up the credibility that comes with being passed from one person to another. You have to get that first person to pass it along.

If that first person has received the message directly from the advertiser, where does the credibility come from? Ideally, from the very message itself. In part four of my series on creating a viral message that sticks, we're going to look at the idea of embedded credibility as a way to make your campaigns more likely to go viral.

(I've pulled these six components from Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick and put my own spin on them.)

Part One: The Need for Simplicity
Part Two: Deliver the Unexpected
Part Three: Be Concrete

For this post, we're going to take a look at how Duracell has used the credibility card to create a highly effective series of commercials. After all, batteries aren't exactly a sexy product that's fun to sell. They're simply one of those things we pick up on our way through the checkout line because we remember our camera or remote control has stopped working or because we picked up some new blinky, buzzy gadget for our kids.

The Challenge of Credibility

Unless you happen to be first to market with some fascinating new invention, chances are high you have competition. There are other companies out there who sell almost the exact same thing you do. Your challenge is to convince people to buy your product instead of that other guy's. To do this, you need to demonstrate why your company offers the best solution.

If you are Duracell, you might decide to differentiate yourself by offering up some type of chart touting your extra long battery life. You could throw out facts, figures and the latest research and prove your credibility to your audience by showing you have the best product.

The problem with this approach is no matter how accurate your data is, you are still a company delivering a sales pitch. Sure your research may show you have the longest battery life, but why should they even believe your data in the first place?

The Hurdle of Skepticism

As the Heath brothers point out in "Made to Stick:"

A citizen of the modern world, constantly inundated with messages, learns to develop skepticism about the sources of those messages. Who's behind these messages? Should I trust them? What do they have to gain if I believe them?"

That's a big hurdle to overcome if you're trying to convince with simple facts and figures. In fact, this is the very reason viral marketing itself is so effective. If a toothpaste commercial claims to make your teeth whiter, you won't think much of it. If you see your brother or sister over the holidays with a dazzling white smile and they tell you they've switched toothpaste, you'll likely pay attention.

That means the credibility you imbed within your message has to stand on its own. The Heath brothers suggest a focus on "vivid details to boost credibility." Studies have shown that vivid details, even ones that don't change the core message, have a dramatic and positive impact on how information is digested.

Apply that line of thinking to the "longer battery life" sales pitch and you can see a dramatic difference. Consider these two possible ad lines:

Fact based: "Duracell batteries last fifteen percent longer."

Vivid detail based: "Using Duracell batteries in your portable DVD player will give you an extra hour and a half of play time. On the long drive to grandma's this Christmas, that means an extra hour and a half of peace and quiet in your car."

Tap Third Parties for Credibility

We've all seen the auto commercials that end with a tag line touting the "JD Power Car of the Year" award and we've all watched celebrities like Ed McMahon, Michael Jordan and William Shatner lend their names (and their credibility) to various products over the years. While consumers may not always trust a company, they do tend to trust third parties, even if those parties have been paid for their endorsements.

Duracell looked to this very idea when creating their latest round of TV commercials. Rather than focus on how long their batteries lasted or create some memorable character to act as a mascot, Duracell decided to tout the many companies that trust Duracell as a way of proving their credibility to consumers. My favorite "Trusted Everywhere" commercials is the "Zoll Defibrillator" spot:

The spots work so well because of the juxtaposition of an every day activity (taking pictures) with something of the utmost importance (using a defibrillator.) After all, if Duracell batteries can be trusted to work when someone's life depends on it, surely they can be trusted to work when you want to take a picture at your son's basketball game.

Duracell borrows and displays credibility to pointing to the people who trust their brand. The credibility of the product is at the very heart of the message. It's this credibility that catches people's eyes and it's the power of the message that makes them consider passing it on.

Coming up

In part five of this series, I'll take a look at the idea of tapping into emotions to give your viral message traction and help it spread.

(Minivan image courtesy of Creative Common license from Flickr user Lee Brimelow.)

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Facebook: Are they really your friends (or customers)?

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:15:26 -0600

by Beth Harte

Back in October there was an article in the New York Times called "Facebook in a Crowd" by Hal Niedzviecki. In the article he describes how he reached out to his almost 700 friends to invite them to a Facebook party. After tabulating the responses Hal had 15 people who said they were attending, 60 that said maybe, a few hundred that said no and no responses from the rest. On the evening of the Facebook party one person (a friend of a friend) showed up to meet him.

The moral of this writer's particular story: When people on Facebook say yes, they really mean maybe. And when they say maybe, they really mean probably not. But ultimately the potential moral is that "friends" might have time for you on-line, but not off.

What does this have to do with business? Well, it was a business that shared this article with me...almost as an example of how social media and/or Web 2.0 applications aren't really reliable for generating business. If you relied on this example alone, that would be understandable.

Here's the thing, being involved in social media isn't just about collecting friends or followers and, voila!, your work is done. Social media takes time and roll-up your sleeves work to develop and nurture conversations. And it's these conversations that can ultimately lead to relationships (i.e. customers).

Facebook is just a tool and having a lot of friends or the ability to start a group doesn't necessarily mean that you will be successful in really connecting people to your company.

If you're considering Facebook as part of your social media strategy, consider Hal's experience one more time. Perhaps take pause and reach out to your customers (or prospects) instead and ask them where they'd like to connect with you. By doing so you might just save yourself that embarrassing situation of your "friends" not showing up to the party.

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Interview: Yahoo's Larry Cornett on Universal Search

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:21:12 -0600

by Manoj Jasra

One of the most interesting sessions at this upcoming Search Engine Strategies in Chicago is going to be Universal & Blended Search. Dr. Larry Cornett, VP, Consumer Products, Yahoo! Search is one of the top experts in the world on this subject and is also a panelist at this session in SES Chicago. Last week I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Cornett to get his insight on blended search and to get a better understanding of Yahoo's future in this area.

[Manoj]: As with textual search, Universal search will continue to improve amongst the search engines. Are there specific things Yahoo wants to address in regards to the user experience with its search offering?

[Larry Cornett]: Yahoo! is committed to providing the best search experience to our users. We are constantly looking at new ways of incorporating different types of content into our search results. A great example is Yahoo! SearchMonkey, which lets any publisher enhance their search results. This technology can be implemented by multimedia publishers who wish to have specifically stylized search results, which showcase the Yahoo! Search engine results page.

In addition to SearchMonkey, Yahoo! Search has also introduced multimedia integration including video, audio and photos (see below) directly into the search results, allowing consumers to get their answer -- whether it's a Web link, photo, video or music clip -- without leaving the page.

[Manoj]: Do users interact with one type of blended search element (i.e: images or video or text or news) better than others, if so why?

[Larry Cornett]: We have already seen good user interaction with our SearchMonkey enhanced listings. Our tests uncovered that users found this blending of structured data to be useful. In fact, in some cases, we saw a lift in click-through rate of as high as 15 percent. We believe that this enriched search experience helps users get directly to the answer they're seeking.

[Manoj]: What did you think of Ask.com's search interface before they changed it back to more of a common search results pages. We thought the uniqueness might help attract more searches.

[Larry Cornett]: I don't want to comment specifically on what our competitors are doing, but what I will say is that we are entering a period of massive change to enable search engines to handle more complex content on the Web as content continues to grow, change, diversify and fragment. At the same time, users are performing increasingly sophisticated and open-ended tasks online, connecting broadly to content and services across the Web. Given these changes, all search engines are becoming more sophisticated and the simple search result page of ten blue text links is evolving to help address these complex tasks. At Yahoo! our aim is to define the intent of the consumer when they are in search.

From a SERP interface perspective we are doing this through Yahoo! SearchMonkey, as I described earlier, which lets publishers creates more useful and visually appealing Yahoo! Search results which will drive more relevant traffic to their sites. For a user's perspective instead of just seeing a Wikipedia link and a snippet, you could call back to Wikipedia and show a photo, get more context about the article, maybe even present some of the external links or the edit history, whatever the publisher wants to do to enhance the result. A Yahoo! Local business listing could put structured information about itself as part of the result, like a photo of the store front and its main line number. Yahoo! SearchMonkey empowers publishers to customize the search experience to help user find what they want easily and the increased relevance of the result can drive traffic to publishers sites.

In addition Yahoo! is differentiating our search experience by providing a safe search experience for our users with SearchScan. The SearchScan feature from Yahoo! Search provides a seamless way for users to search the web with confidence by reducing the risk of visiting dangerous sites on the Web with no download or fee required. It works by filtering out or alerts users to sites with possible spyware downloads, hacking risks, or sites that generate email spam.

[Manoj]: According to comScore, Google has continued to get stronger in search market share in the last year. What do the other engines have to do in order to maintain and grow their own markets?

[Larry Cornett]: Yahoo! is committed to providing an open, relevant search experience that understands the users' intent. That said, we have recently launched a service called Yahoo! Search BOSS - an open Web services platform that offers developers and companies the chance to create and launch Web-scale search products by utilizing the same infrastructure, technology and index that powers Yahoo! Search. BOSS fosters search innovation by enabling developers and companies to disrupt the search landscape by building their own world-class search experiences.

Yahoo! is looking to fragment the search market, create an equal opportunity for all players, and expand the Y! Search advertising network through unprecedented access to our search infrastructure. By creating this new ecosystem for search, we may see changes in our market share, but largely at our competitors' expense.

With BOSS, you can build your own search engine - one that recognizes the difference between blogs, user reviews, news and shopping sites, and clusters results accordingly. Developers and companies can use BOSS to create a more social search engine, in which rankings are determined by a users' social graph and combined with newsfeed results, or conduct a visual search to present thumbnails of the Web pages instead of links, making it more user-friendly for non-savvy searchers. Essentially, BOSS will enable a range of fundamentally different search experiences for companies big and small.

[Manoj]: How is the search experience at Yahoo different than Google?

[Larry Cornett]: Yahoo! has spent a lot of time and research creating a new search experience for our users. One of the things we know from our research is that our users struggle when they are searching on an unfamiliar topic. They often don't even know how to start their search. So in October 2007, we launched a significant new feature roll-out, which includes Yahoo! Search Assist and enhanced Yahoo! Shortcuts.

Search Assist (see below) essentially helps users overcome one of their key pain points, which is how to craft an effective query. As they begin to type their query or their keyword into the box, it suggests other keywords that might be related to what they're typing. It also provides them the correct spelling of those keywords. And after they've conducted their initial search, Search Assist actually suggests related concepts based on their query to help them follow the right path to get the job done.

We know from our research that another pain point for users is that search engines often don't provide the ultimate answer. They only help them down the path of finding the answer. And what we want to do at Yahoo! is actually start to begin to deliver what they really need within the search experience. So we're not just focused on the process of searching but really on the act of finding. And to that end, we have also introduced enhanced Yahoo! Shortcuts (see below) that actually deliver the most relevant information that our users are seeking for particular types of searches.

So for example, if you type in the name of a movie at the very top of the search results page you get a link to a video trailer. You get local show times in your area, a link to a deeper description of that movie as well as reviews from critics and other Yahoo! users, right there at the top of the search results page. We're trying to deliver the most relevant information to our users immediately following their search to help make their job easier.

We know that this is resonating with users, as Yahoo! was voted No. 1 in Search Assistance & Suggestions, according to a Dec. 2007 Keynote Systems study, "Keynote Customer Experience Rankings: Search".

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How to Make Decisions That'll Rock Your SEO Campaign, Part II

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:42:04 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

Yesterday we looked at five decision making strategies and applied them to SEO. Today we'll conclude with an additional five ways to help you make better SEO and business success decisions.

Take time to get all the facts; conjecture leads to crisis.

There are two sets of facts that you need to have before moving forward with any type of SEO strategy or fix. The first is understanding what the problems with the site are, and the second is knowing what can or cannot be done to fix them.

When putting together your options for moving forward, understanding these facts will help you sort out which options are viable and which are not. Moving forward without being fully aware of all the facts leads to poor decisions based off of an incomplete or poorly considered set of options.

Once you know the problem and have a set of options to work from, you then need to be sure to fully understand the potential implementation of each of these options. Some options are simply not as workable on some sites as on others. Knowing what you're working with and how each option may play out within the confines of your site matters a great deal.

Consider the consequences of each action.

As an SEO we have to be fully aware that every change to a site could have potentially negative consequences. Granted most strategies have been proven to produce a positive impact on websites, but this isn't true 100% of the time. Some changes will have a positive long-term impact but have a severely negative short-term effect.

Before moving forward with any change to a site you have to consider both the long- and short- term consequences. Any short-term negatives have to be weighed against the overall long-term gains. In many cases the overall gain isn't worth the losses that'll happen in between. A good example of this is changing URL structure just to get keywords in the URLs. The gain will be minimal while the temporary loss in rankings can be significant.

Make sure your expectations don't exceed your potential and your resources.

One of the hardest thing to do in SEO is to manage expectations properly. An SEO selling their services will often promise miracles to get the sale but then tell the client not to expect miracles at all. SEO is never a magic solution and often times what we think will be an easy job turns out to be anything but. It's like peeling back the layers of an onions. You get one problem solved and that uncovers several more problems.

One of the primary issues with keeping expectations in balance is ensuring that client knows what they can expect for the investment they have made. Sometimes you promise little but the client expects a great deal, even though they are paying for very little. It's important that the client knows what they'll be getting for the service they have paid for and understand that sometimes you have to pay more to get more.

Time is your most limited and valuable resource. Don't wast it.

My personal philosophy on time is don't do yourself what you can pay someone else to do for you. Especially if you know they can do it more quickly and efficiently.

As they say, time is money.

Every small business owner has this dilemma. How much should they do themselves versus how much can they afford to hire someone to do for them. When it comes to SEO, the business owner must decide how much of their own time can be dedicated to doing the detailed work, or if their time is better spent elsewhere, like running the business.

SEO isn't difficult but it does require knowledge. Most of that knowledge is available for free, but that doesn't take into consideration the cost of your time to learn it, implement it and then to ensure each strategy is performing effectively.

On the SEO side, the client is paying for results. There are a lot of things we can spend our time doing for a client, but first and foremost our time must be spent where it will provide the greatest return. This is especially true when budgets are limited. We must put often balance between doing what's important and doing what's urgent. And sometimes we can't do both.

One note to business owners who hire SEOs to do a job for them. Realize that any time they spend taking your calls and answering emails is time away from the work they could be spending on your account. That's not to suggest that your time isn't wisely invested in getting updates, however having to constantly be reassured means that the SEO is spending that time talking rather than doing.

Allow yourself a 10% risk of being wrong, a 50% likelihood of something going wrong, and a 100% commitment to survive it all.

There are many precautions that we must take in life but hope that they won't be unnecessary. Just like insurance, we need to have it but hope to never have to use it. When moving forward with your SEO campaign there are are certain mental precautions that we must understand in order to be prepared for, however unlikely they may be.

The first is that you may be wrong. Shocker! Whether you're wrong about implementing this strategy over that strategy, or choosing one path over another, you have to be content with knowing that at some point or another you'll make a bad decision. Nobody is 100% perfect 100% of the time. Some SEO strategies are implemented based on past performance from other sites, but there is no guarantee that the same strategy will work for this site. Be prepared to be wrong.

You must also be aware that doing all the right things correctly, something may still go seriously and unexpectedly wrong. There is no clear path into the future and only hind site is 20/20. Be prepared for disasters but hope they never come.

Finally, no matter what, you must be committed to overcoming all obstacles and generating your own success. Life throws curve balls and SEO is not an exact enough science to be smooth sailing all the way. So whatever happens, being prepared for the possible but accepting only victory is the only sure way to success.

Success is a path that must be paved by each person making wise decisions. Search engine optimization isn't an instant path to victory. There are still dozens of daily decisions that have to be carefully considered and thoroughly before action is taken. But once you have a history of making good SEO decisions, success becomes much easier.

Every day new habits are developed that help us better understand and implement the myriads of SEO strategies that we are presented with. With each successful decision, the next becomes easier and our rate of implementing a successful SEO campaign increases. Just as in all aspects of life, making solid SEO decisions leads us to a more assured victory online.

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Puppy's Picks - 11/25/08

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 19:54:04 -0600

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don't have to. From the new "Twitter-bite" to small businesses turning to the web for cheap marketing, find out which articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

I remember talking to my friend Matt Bailey earlier this year after a conference and hearing him talk about how he seems our industry shifting from the "sound bite" to the "Twitter bite." His point was that people would soon begin making their points in 140 characters or less, so they could easily be quoted on Twitter. Sure enough, Jim Connolly over at Jim's Marketing Blog has compiled 37 Marketing Tips in 140 Characters or less. (Via via Steve Woodruff.)

If you've been playing around with Google's free Website Optimizer but wonder if you are missing the boat in terms of potential, you might want to check out a new book by Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar. Chris Sherman has a review of Always be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer" over at Search Engine Land.

There was a good post in the Bradenton Herald yesterday looking at small businesses and they way they use social networking sites and the web to market their small businesses. These are the local coffee shops, restaurants and other companies that compete with national chains while trying to hold tight to a budget. It's a good read to get a feel for how small businesses are beginning to embrace the web and includes a few bits of simple (and effective) advice.

Mack Collier delivers another killer post over at Marketing Profs Daily Fix. This one outlines ten things every corporate blog should have. Ten, that's it, ten simple things. If you are blogging, or thinking of blogging, you need to read this list. From comment policies to recruiting your bloggers to RSS buttons, Mack gives you the run down of what you MUST know to get rolling.

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How to Make Decisions That'll Rock Your SEO Campaign, Part I

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:06:02 -0600

by Stoney deGeyter

There is something about taking everyday life lessons and applying them to specific business situations. We often hear proverbs and anecdotes that we can apply throughout our daily routines, but until we hear them placed into a specific context we are often left with bumper-sticker philosophies that have little practical application.

Last week I presented a two part series of questions that SEOs and clients must ask themselves in order to work together to create a successful optimization campaign. Each of those questions could have been posed of anybody for any situation. But by looking at each specifically in the context of SEO we were able to create a thought process that allows for specific application of those questions in the SEO / client relationship.

Today I want to take a set of guidelines about making good decisions and apply them to the SEO and business success environment. Every day SEOs and business owners looking for ways to improve their online exposure are faced with dozens of decisions. Any one of these decisions can breath life into a dying SEO campaign, push a successful campaign to greater success, or cause a site to crash and burn in the search results.

Here are the first five of ten decision-making guidelines that'll help you rock your SEO and SEM campaigns to success.

Never make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances.

Rankings are volatile and frequently change as engines adjust their algorithms, new competition emerges and site changes are implemented. Sites that have held top positions for years can often find themselves displaced with the next algorithm update. Sometimes this can be a legitimate drop in relevance, while other times it can be a temporary snafu. Before making any sudden or permanent decisions, you must know the difference.

Every now and then we have a client that watches their rankings on a daily, if not hourly basis. If that ranking drops, for whatever reason, they are on the phone calling us to find out what's going on. Each time we stress the need for patience. Often times the adjustments are temporary and making any changes will be more likely to prevent the ranking from bouncing back.

At the same time, investigation is in order. When such changes happen, one must investigate the issue to determine if the change is a temporary glitch, or if it's the result of something else going on. Only once that determination has been made should any action be taken.

Don't let your emotions blind you to reason.

The business owner or the SEO (if they are different) can often find themselves heavily invested in achieving "top rankings". We've convinced ourselves that the only way to be successful is to have our keyword rank in the number one position. Logically, however, we know this isn't true. There are many different things that factor into success, and search engines are (or at least should be) just a small part of that. Nobody should place the whole of their business success in Google's hands. Especially considering the volatile nature of the search results.

While reason can tell us that the higher the ranking the more traffic you'll receive, but traffic alone is not what you're after. The most crucial thing to being successful is getting more sales while maintaining lower expenses. While you need to have traffic to get sales, increasing traffic isn't always the best way to achieve it.

This is especially true in SEO where targeting certain keywords may bring an abundance of traffic but low conversions and other keywords will bring lower traffic but greater conversion rates. Similarly, changing a title tag may cause a drop in rankings but may also be more compelling and entice more clicks to the site than the better ranking title tag generated.

SEO is about the big picture and we can't get wrapped up in the smaller issues. That's not to say that we should do nothing, but we must be reasonable about what is the right course of action and what action is truly producing the best results for the business.

Surround yourself with sharp people and draw on their gifts, without being intimidated by their expertise.

People are often intimidated by those who know more than themselves. In SEO this mentality can keep us away from seeking out people who may be able to help us in ways that we cannot achieve for ourselves.

In running an SEO firm, I strive to employ the "Robin Hood" model, at least as it was relayed to me by a friend who actually read the book! From what I understand, Robin Hood would not allow someone to be a part of his gang that couldn't beat him in a fight. In order to be successful, Robin Hood brought in only people who were better than him.

This principle applies throughout business and SEO. One person simply cannot have the monopoly on all SEO and web marketing knowledge. Therefore it is important to rely on others who know more and can do better than we ever could. With this model, I find that I learn many new things about SEO from those whom I employ or communicate with because they are in different trenches than I am. At the same time, they learn from my differing skills and expertise as well.

In some cases it's easy to find people to perform certain jobs, especially when we know we have little or no knowledge of that particular area. But in areas where we know we are strong, it's often difficult to bring in others who are just as strong, if not stronger. Especially when they have their own style and way of doing things. SEOs and business owners can benefit a great deal by finding people who's skills overlap and ideas can be bounced off each other, creating far more success than any one could do individually.

Take time to consider all options.

With all the options there are at any given moment of an SEO campaign, it is important that you take adequate time to consider each option carefully. While we can often get far on gut instinct, the first option isn't always the best option.

In SEO, there are times where one set of options will conflict with another leaving you to have to chose which is the best route forward. Other times you simply only want to implement one change or new campaign at a time in order to know what's effective and what's not. In these cases, proper decisions can be made only once all the options are presented and thought through.

Do you change a title tag? Increase or decrease keyword usage? Go out and get more links? Employ a social media campaign? Do you have the budget for one and not another? What is most likely to improve the results? Which is riskier?

These and many other questions must be asked and analyzed before moving forward with any one-single option. And once you decide to move forward, monitor carefully. If the results are negative, go back, undo, and try something different.

Choose your battles.

You can only do so much at a time. One of the things we come up against in performing SEO is budget vs. time. In SEO there are simply an unlimited number of options before you at any given time but you must pick and choose what you can and want to do.

In many cases the fight isn't so much about budget or time, but it's about approval. We often find we can do little more than make certain recommendations and then it's up to the client to do the rest. We can push hard and potentially sour a good relationship, or we can move on to other things that can and will be implemented.

Each decision must be weighted with the potential benefit, both in terms of immediate and long-term success for the optimization campaign and the client. Deciding what to do and when is as important as just about any other decision you can make.

Later this week I'll continue with Part II, providing five more decision making strategies that can be applied to creating a successful SEO campaign.

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