Don’t worry about it. Yes, you need to be aware of what Google is doing to its algorithm, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Put your focus on where it should be.

Clients. Customers. Readers.

Has this ever happened to you? You’ve optimized a website as best as you possibly could. You built external links and employed some of the most creative link building tactics you could think of from guest posting to creating a viral meme. The client’s traffic is up by 12%. Client’s keywords: Ranking on page 1 of Google and still climbing.

Then one day you get a call from your client, and he tells you, “I’m not making any sales.”

You reply, “But your traffic is up by 12%. Your keywords are on page 1 and climbing.”

“That’s great,” he says. “But I’m not making money” or “I need leads.”

Whoops. Did we miss something?

Every agency’s been through this. Happens all the time.

Know Your Goal

Always determine the ultimate goal of your website whether it’s for your client or for your own business. For most businesses, it’s conversions. Conversions could be sales, number of people who fill out a form online, the number of phone calls your client receives. It could be leads. The goal will determine which are the best online marketing techniques to employ.

Sounds like common sense, right?

Yet Google goes through update after update of algorithm changes, scrubbing their search engine of junk links, junk content, junk pages — just plain junk. It’s in their best interest to keep the search engine free of junk. They want to produce the best results which keeps web surfers coming back. In turn, that attracts advertisers. It’s simply business.

However…

As a linkbuilder, on-site optimizer, blogger, content writer, multimedia specialist, PPC advertiser or just Average Joe work at home affiliate marketer, it’s just too easy to get so wrapped up in your specialty and SEO technique that you forget about the client’s goal. In fact what happens, your techniques become the goal, and you’re well down the road before you realize that there’s a disconnect.

Just Take a Breath

Every so often you need to step away from your tree and see how well it’s integrating with the forest. That’s where managers and project managers often come into play.

Blog posts and forums all over are buzzing about what Google is going to do and not do. Are they going to devalue guest posting like they did article directories in the last update? Are they going to target people who put their link in their author bio?

Fuggedaboutit.

Focus on your client’s needs, and that will determine what the best strategy you can use. The moment we stop thinking about website properties as devices for ranking and start thinking of them as what they were supposed to be used for — platforms to connect with clients, readers and customers — we’re headed in the right direction.

You’ll solve the problem of being relevant, unique and helpful. We must simply take the focus off of what we’re doing and place it where it belongs.

Search Engines – What are they making these days?

In the last couple of weeks the first quarter financials were reported for Google and Microsoft.    Google’s profits are up but so is Microsoft’s.  I sometimes hear from potential clients “I never click on those paid ads and I don’t know why anyone would”.   People DO click on PPC ads all the time every day searching for everything.   Why?  PPC ads target what people are looking for with concise distinct calls to action to help people get what they are looking for.  After all if no one is clicking on these ads the following profits wouldn’t exist.

Microsoft Corp. has announced quarterly revenue of $20.49 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2013. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $7.61 billion, $6.06 billion, and $0.72 per share.

“The bold bets we made on cloud services are paying off as people increasingly choose Microsoft services including Office 365, Windows Azure, Xbox LIVE, and Skype,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “While there is still work to do, we are optimistic that the bets we’ve made on Windows devices position us well for the long-term.” – [microsoft.com]

Conversely on the Google front.

“We had a very strong start to 2013, with $14.0 billion in revenue, up 31% year-on-year,” said Larry Page, CEO of Google. “We are working hard and investing in our products that aim to improve billions of people’s lives all around the world.

Google Inc. reported consolidated revenues of $13.97 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2013, an increase of 31% compared to the first quarter of 2012. Google Inc. reports advertising revenues, consistent with GAAP, on a gross basis without deducting traffic acquisition costs (TAC). In the first quarter of 2013, TAC totaled $2.96 billion, or 25% of advertising revenues. – [investor.google.com]

Almost $14billion! in a quarter! That is a lot of revenue!
Microsoft has a host of products that they have begun to offer as ‘cloud computing solutions’  similar to Google Doc’s  which people that I knew hated because they didn’t translate 100% into “Microsoft doc’s” (word, excel etc) that everyone else was using.   This will leverage Microsoft into the Google cloud space on this front.  On the PPC side Bing continues to expand its influence eating away at the market share as more and more people are picking Bing over Google.  Some just because it is a different set of search results, some because Bing is integrated with Facebook.

According to Bing Ads. worldwide Bing is gaining its popularity and people that use Bing typically spend more.  I have some data in my own clients that, for those clients that Bing is successful in, they are high-dollar purchases.   So while this might seem like a pretty robust claim it probably isn’t too far off the mark.

I have experienced a few merchants that have experienced poor results in Bing vs. Google but I have the same number or actually more that the reverse is true.  The long and the short of this is, as a merchant it would be unwise to not at least explore what Bing and Yahoo can do to promote your business.  You could be missing out on a considerable amount of income.

Bill Martin

Ghostwriting can be done in a variety of degrees—from simply fleshing out a few pieces of another’s manuscript to completely writing it based off a few guidelines. While the latter certainly seems like a scam, keep in mind the ghostwriters aren’t just talented enough to write on their own, they’re definitely making bank.

Popular examples include The Babysitter’s Club, Nancy Drew, and Sweet Valley High series, the James Bond books, and even Star Wars. Each of these examples was mostly written by a ghostwriter, with a little guidance from the person whose name sits on the cover. Really good ghostwriting can bring in an estimated $10,000 for a short piece, and upwards of $25,000 for a novel.
Put numbers like that in front of a college student and just watch how big their eyes get.

Films and musicians employ ghostwriting, too. Some, like Dr. Dre’s 2001 album The Message isn’t as well-known as being written by ghosts, others are: you didn’t think Taylor Swift wrote all of her own songs, did you? Besides, it’s a great way of making connections and building your resume—can you say you helped create one of the greatest hits of the decade?

Ghostwriting keeps looking better, right?

Essentially, that’s what I do for SEO. I take the information from a client and try to familiarize myself with whatever it is that they have. Before I started writing for SEO, I definitely didn’t know much of anything about lawn care, or unclogging my own pipes, but now I can safely talk about the topic. I thoroughly research what I’ll need to discuss, sometimes going so far as to try a DIY project myself, before I put my fingers to the keyboard.

While getting to know someone else’s characters may be a bit easier, I doubt it’s as much fun. My name certainly isn’t mentioned in many places, and the majority of the things I write will not be credited to me. At least, not by the public; only by my boss who signs off on my paycheck.

Ghostwriting is about a little more than that, though—I’m definitely expanding my knowledge base, which comes in handy while I write my own novel on the side. And I’m getting enough exercise in spelling and proper grammar without (hopefully) having to take too many trips to the editor’s office. I’m probably getting carpal tunnel, as well, but everything’s got to have a little risk involved.

A while back I wrote about the value of looking at your website as a person. Let’s take that a step further. If your website is your virtual salesperson, the first step to making it sell is obvious – find out what a would-be customer is looking for.

How do you find that out? What if I told you that the answer is probably sitting nearby fielding an angry customer’s phone call?

Want to Understand the Action? Get in the Trenches.

Your sales staff is in the trenches on a daily basis. They’re listening to the needs of your customers every minute of the day. They’re finding ways to convince customers to buy and listening to the reasons why some customers won’t.

That’s a gold mine of information.

So how can using your offline sales people help your virtual salesperson sell better?

• Understand the Motive: Why does somebody want to do business with you? What possesses people to pick up the phone and call your office?

• Know the Needs: Anybody can identify trends. Your company may get thousands of phone calls in a day. What do a majority of those callers want to know about you? What do they really need from you?

• Find the Turn-Offs: Objections are critical for improving your conversion rate. Why do customers turn away? What specific points are deal-breakers?

Your sales staff can answer all of these questions. Why? Because every day they’re in the trenches listening to life stories, fielding tough questions and finding out what makes the best consistent answers.

“But we’re talking about websites here, not offline sales.”

When it comes to fine-tuning websites for higher conversion rates, the offline is often overlooked. Your website is an extension of your offline business. It has its unique twists and turns, but some things never change, like meeting a customer’s needs quickly.

Knowing a customer’s needs, concerns and hesitations applies to online and offline alike.

Case in Point

One of our recent clients, Dr. Tim Love, wanted to get more leads for his website promoting hair transplant procedures.

The client told us that one of his employees, Clara, was an expert at getting callers who were on the fence to come in for a consultation. A large part of our research started with her. After a few conversations, we were able to learn a few things about customers:

• The psychological motivation behind a conversion wasn’t just appearance. Prospective customers were trying to find a way to improve their confidence and re-build their self-esteem.

• Their primary concerns of most customers were cost, the credentials of the surgeon and the specifics of what the procedure entailed.

• Many customers were suspicious of pricing and didn’t like that other clinics had not given them clear up-front answers to their concerns.

Armed with that information, we re-shaped the navigational structure of the website. Main navigation choices were limited to categories that addressed the major needs of prospective customers. We also added a site-wide “Ask a Specialist” contact form so that customers knew that they would get answers to their questions from an experienced professional hair transplant specialist.

These changes contributed to a 144% increase in conversion rate.

The Takeaway

There are a lot of tools available to help you learn more about how your customers are treating your website. Don’t forget to be old-fashioned from time to time and use some common sense. Your sales staff is in constant contact with the customer. Use that knowledge to turn your website into an expert virtual salesperson selling 24/7.

A Bad Reputation Could Cost You Top Rankings in Google

At the SXSW conference in Austin TX last Friday Matt Cutt’s Google lead on fighting web spam stated that ““We have a potential launch later this year, maybe a little bit sooner, looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be ranking in the search results.”. This would lead one to believe that Google is preparing yet another major update to its ranking algorithm sometime later this year where ranking merchants will also include reviews from consumers about that business.

SEO Continues to Evolve to Include Reputation

Back in 2010 Google took action against a company that was using his terrible reputation to improve his rankings because Google’s algorithm didn’t differentiate between good reviews and bad ones, only that the site appeared to be popular as noted in David Segal’s NY Times piece titled: A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web. In other wards this merchant found that by creating controversy through his terrible customer service he was getting a lot of attention and his rankings actually went up because merchant rankings were weighting relevancy highly. Well those days are coming to an end where relevancy rules and your overall reputation will soon play a major role in a merchants ability to rank highly in Google. Matt Cutt’s is letting us know that as SEO’s we need to let our clients know that their reputation is no longer just about them and the impression that leaves on visitors online, but will now become an important ranking factor in the months to come.

Policing Online Reputations & Reviews

In the end I see this as a positive thing because as SEO’s we want our clients to rank well in the Google SERP’s, but we should also want to represent good quality merchants that provide a valuable service to their communities. Of course it will be interesting to see how Google handles reviews and thus reputation because that also leaves open the door for competitors or unethical SEO companies to try to create fake reviews to boost their own rankings while also writing bad reviews for competitors to bring them down. As such I believe Google will be setting up some stringent checks and balances to try to determine a real review from a fake one and I’m afraid that some legitimate real reviews could get removed by an aggressive algorithm and as always Google will make adjustments to find just the right balance to find the sweet spot for keeping the real reviews intact and removing most of the fake ones. In the meantime if you’re a merchant you should continue to ask your customers to go online and leave your business a testimonial on Google+, Yelp and other local review sites to establish your good name and online reputation.

In April of 2013 Google will start to disallow ads that include phone numbers in their text.  The Google official word on their policy page is:

“In the next few weeks, we will no longer allow phone numbers to be used in the ad text of new ads. Advertisers who would still like to promote phone numbers in their AdWords advertising can use the call extensions feature. We’re posting this alert now to provide adequate lead time to make ad changes.

In April 2013, we will begin to disapprove ads that were using phone numbers in their ad text before the March 2013 policy change.

We are making this change to foster a safer, more consistent user experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.”

I have to wonder how not including a phone number in a business ad provides a “safer user experience”.  Is the phone number going to jump out and get someone?

I called Google to ask, “What about companies whose phone number is their logo?” For example: 1800flowers, 1800petmeds, etc. – are these now unable to use their TM in their own ads? Is the policy department at Google now going to be flooded with exemption requests from disapproved ads?”  The front line staff at Google that I talked to didn’t know or couldn’t comment.

Whether or not a call extension feature is served depends upon quality score and Ad Rank parameters.  If you don’t meet these parameters, Google will not serve your phone number with the paid search ad.   This can be problematic and actually hurt businesses that need to consistently be in 4^th or 5^th position due to budget constraints where they may not have all the parameters required to have a visible call extension.

Is Google going to change the parameters requiring call extensions to show?  Will more positions be able to show phone numbers? Or will you have to now bid high enough to be in the top 3 Ad Rank slots to have a phone number show with the new ‘enhanced campaigns’?

Sometimes change is for the better.  I suppose we will have to wait and see on this one.  It will definitely, however, make more money for Google.

If you’ve been having trouble finding sufficient links for your web pages or your client’s pages, perhaps you’re aiming too narrow. You won’t be able to find high quality links that way.

Suppose you sell Kewpie dolls in Nebraska. You search the internet and find two other blogs that also talk about Kewpie dolls in Nebraska. Unfortunately, neither of those two blogs will allow you to guest post or leave a link on their site. They see you as competition.

You decide to look at Kewpie doll blogs across the United States, but you only find a handful. Two of them are willing to link to you but no one else is. How are you going to push up the ranks with just a couple of lousy links? What do you do?

Broaden the Relevancy

Broaden your scope. Relevancy doesn’t just mean your site is related to other sites that are exactly like yours so you can get a higher link score. Relevancy applies to your customer base, too. Don’t forget them. After all, they’re the ones who are willing to buy what you’re trying to sell.

Think of the type of people who would buy your Kewpie dolls: doll collectors, antique shops, antique collectors, ebay power sellers, auctions, etc. Where are you likely to find these type of people? Go there. Google is smart enough to pick up the connections among all of these sites.

As senior link builder Kevin McGaffin states, “You get links by being part of an online community…you want to get links from those people and become a part of that community.”

Too Focused on the Task of Link Building

Sometimes, you can get so bogged down in your link building efforts and trying to make the links fit your personal criteria that it can be easy to forget about your customer base.

Put yourself in the mindset of your customer or your client’s customer base. If you were that customer, what sites would you visit? What would you most likely read about? See where you can start aiming for more links?

If you think like a customer and broaden your scope, your opportunities for finding potential high-quality, relevant  links becomes easier.

Imagine that your website is a person.

When you think about it, it isn’t much of a stretch to say that your website has a personality. Its design generates a first impression just like a person’s physical appearance does. Its copy influences a prospect’s thoughts just like a salesperson’s words do.

The good and bad qualities of a website cause the same response as the good and bad qualities of a person would.

With that in mind, let me show you how you could take the first steps to conversion rate optimization using considerations that you already make on a daily basis.

1. What do people think about you and your friends?

Like it or not, preconceived notions exist in every industry. These opinions can be good or bad, and sometimes they can be a handicap to your business before somebody even thinks about visiting your website.

As much as we’d like to believe that everybody is willing to give a company a fair shot, I’ll guarantee you that there may be not one person on earth who doesn’t have an opinion locked and loaded. I say “fast food,” and instantly you think “fattening” or “cheap.”

If you want to have a fighting chance at improving your conversion rate, you have to know and fully understand what the pre-existing notions about your industry are. This applies to any business, from a lawn mower repair shop in your shed to a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Once you understand these pre-existing notions, you’ve got to ask…

2. Do you fit the preconceived notion?

Here’s an example of how fitting the stereotype can affect you: You own a car dealership. The majority opinion is that car dealers are loud, obnoxious and high-pressure. Somebody visits your website looking for a car and they’re met with a high-intensity color scheme and pop-ups left and right. BAM! You’ve just lost their business.

Facepalm

Now that you understand what people think about your industry in general, you have to do some honest soul searching to figure out if your business fits the pre-conceived notions of people.

If people generally distrust your industry, does your website give them reason to hold that opinion against you? If people hold your industry in high regard, do you appear to go above and beyond?

Armed with these concepts, you can begin the conversion optimization process by asking the single most important question of all:

3. How can you become the type of person that your target market trusts?

The answer is different for every company in every industry. Like Honest Abe said, “You can’t please all people all the time,” but in order for your website’s personality has to be in line with what your customers are looking for.

Once you truly understand the fundamental relationship between your business, its website and the people you want to sell to, then you can start thinking about split testing headlines, copy and images.

Link Building Duties and Responsibilities:

• Learn current link building best practices and apply that knowledge to assigned link building campaigns.
• Understand the business implications of SEO decisions and work with the on-site SEO team, taking personal ownership of clients’ performance.
• Use current link building techniques and creative thinking to meet and/or exceed monthly link building goals.
• Track keyword improvements. Publish monthly reports and communicate campaign results to clients effectively.
• Research emerging trends in link building, analyze results, report findings to rest of the team.

Required Aptitudes:

• Maintain a high-level understanding of SEO, online marketing and link building best practices while keeping abreast of recent developments and emerging strategies.
• Work closely with others on the SEO team to optimize campaigns for best results. Balance SEO objectives with website usability and strategic marketing objectives.

Education and/or Experience:

• At least two years of college or IT-related vocational training. Any relevant work experience a plus.
• Excellent computer and Internet skills.

Pluses:

• Front-end web development (HTML/CSS and Javascript) experience.
• WordPress or other content management systems.
• Blogging and/or guest blogging experience.

Send your resume and cover letter to gnewby@opubco.com or apply online here.