My previous article on SEO spammers told of all the things that can go wrong around getting a higher Google search page listing. What happens when you hire the wrong SEO company or buy the wrong SEO software. But what can a typical website owner do to boost their traffic and not break any of the rules? Without getting in to the technical side, what does Google recommended?

Well, here’s a classic 45min video from Google’s Matt Cutts a few years back, most of which is still relevant today. He presents  things in a practical, somewhat humorous tone, He talks here to bloggers and developers at a big WordPress conference, but the same obviously applies to any website, be it for small or large businesses.

Today, with the latest changes at Google, the emphasis is even more on quality content and less on the numbers of backlinks, which is what that SEO optimisation software and too many SEO services have to offer. Avoid them at all costs!

p.s. Matt touches upon several really great tools Google offers for webmasters. Unfortunately most website designers and developers here don’t use them. Some sites I see don’t even have Google analytics loaded!  I use these tools all the time myself, providing our clients with regular plain English reports on what it all means. And how the data can be used to:  reduce site errors; build traffic; revise content; ensure Google is not penalising you.

Not all SEO companies are honest  or know what they’re doing

This is what Google is trying to block and it appears to be working. The Penguin update targeted all the dubious practices employed by most search engine optimiser software and/or SEO ‘gurus’. It’s been commonplace for the past 10 years, getting paid links or spinning content articles and distributing them just to improve rankings.

Now, simply by playing by the rules and recommendations long outlined by Google, you can be handsomely rewarded. Millions of clean, well built websites with good content have seen improvements in their search page position over the last few weeks, as dubious competitors that were placed higher on the page (by buying backlinks and manipulating things), have been banished.

The lure of instant traffic is always tempting

The sad part is that many reputable companies were sucked in by these people and are now, unfortunately, paying a heavy price. One of the highest profile cases of this was JC Penny in the US, which employed a company that used dubious SEO practices, which ultimately cost them millions in lost sales. (read more)

What does a typical spammer offer?

I had a classic example today from a comment link on one of my clients sites. It was a rare one that got past the WordPress sites akismet comment spam filter. The link took me to a webpage that made some bold promises. (right). The bad grammar and spelling is often an early sign of trouble ahead. For those in India, China or the Ukraine, English is their second language. However I’ve seen a couple locals doing this too using  slick, quite believable sales pitch.

For only $29 I could get a thousand PR3 backlinks. This is good right? I checked this website to see if it did what it said, a key indicator being a high domain authority.

The result stunned me, with a figure of 89/100. This is very high. I thought, maybe I should get out my credit card? It would take me years of work to get a page authority like this. However in reality, this is simply a reflection of an ‘expected ranking’, using simple math, based upon the number of backlinks. Google may have a different figure.

Did it Work?

However the end goal here is to rank high in a search page result. This was the promise made for the $29. Normally, a good website that had a high page authority like this would get hundreds of results and lots of traffic.

But a quick check using other diagnostic SEO software (below, right), showed me this promotional site that obviously used its own system, in spite of all those thousands of backlinks, received only two page rankings, both being it’s own url, which doesn’t count

I would safely conclude that those buying into this service would have the same outcome. In fact in many cases it would do them far more harm than good. If they had pages that did rank, adding in this service would at some point send it plummeting down the search page result. i.e. Get it banned by Google. 

All this work by Google is good news for the average small business trying to be found online. However I still worry that some businesses are being sucked into this. People are getting these sorts of offers by email every day. Some provide bogus SEO reports on your existing website, saying it needs to be fixed in some way. Several of my own clients get these and then start to question my work! (Annoying to say the least).

If it sounds too good to be true, it likely is

Many firms that currently have a basic brochure website built that usually gets little traffic anyway think why not just try this? It surely can’t do any harm. And it’s a ‘better deal’ than that local SEO company that wanted to charge a $1000 or more and take months to get good traffic. But the sad reality is that it could make things far worse.

Don’t be sucked in by these SEO ‘experts’. Google WILL punish you

It can get quirky too, as some have reported great traffic results for several weeks, and site owners bask in the glow of their success and a wise investment. But then it suddenly crashes, as the Google algorithm kicks in. And once your site is banned by Google, it takes a very long time to get it back into shape and ranked for anything. Removing those bad backlinks is a near impossible task. If you want traffic, you’re often better to start a new website, under a new domain name. Yikes!

However for spammers it’s a numbers game. If 1 in 1000 people pay up the $29 and you can get a hundred suckers a day, that’s good income. But pity the gullible website owner or marketer taken in by it. I guess some people are just too trusting.

Beware -  It’s happening Downunder too

Sadly, it’s not just those from India or the Ukraine you have to worry about. Monitor SEO forums on linkedin and it’s clear many are not listening. Some are even signing a petition for Google to roll back their latest penguin update. That’s the last thing we need!

I also came across an Auzzie guru last week that in one of his brand new SEO training videos, talked about building backlinks, including those from link and content farms. Amazingly, he even acknowledged that it carried a risk since it was against Googles terms of service. But he STILL recommended his clients do it as it had worked for him in the past!

Clearly some people have their heads stuck in the sand and are both deaf and dumb…

Those who use Facebook [CMS] community platform have long gotten used to self-managing their online presense and content. People have got used to being in control. WordPress technology can let businesses do the same for their own company website. And it’s not expensive to upgrade almost any small business website to the WordPress platform.

Once setup, a WordPress-based website lets unskilled users safely update content themselves through a simple online editor, the free MS LiveWriter software or an iPhone App - No need to call the site designer and have changes made a few days later, at a cost.

How Big is WordPress today?

Today almost 1 in 4 new websites in the US opt to use WordPress. (Sadly, we believe it’s around 1 in 50 in NZ). The next most popular CMS, Joomla, which we recommended for many years, is used by just 2%.

There are other minor contenders like dotnetnuke, silverstripe, simplecms, plus the thousands of proprietary ‘home built’ platforms like that from Zeald.

These minor CMS platforms will slowly fall away. Why? They lack the low establishment costs, the standard built-in features and easy upgrade path WordPress inherently provides*. WordPress lets any developer access high-end CMS coding, for free. They can then quickly enhance it to suit their individual client needs. And there’s ZERO risk.

Even if that lone web developer disappeared tomorrow, there are tens of thousands of others worldwide who could quickly pick up the pieces, supporting and enhancing the site. This is the beauty of open source software over the more costly proprietary options.

Try WordPress out for FREE

For those wanting to try out an instant version of WordPress, you can setup a free WordPress blogsite in minutes from www.wordpress.com. I have a couple family blogs where I use this service. You get a range of layouts to chose from, but because it’s hosted by WordPress themselves, you don’t get the 100% customised appearance, or the SEO and traffic benefits of running your own website. The popular ‘blogger’ platform from Google shares this limitation.

An Amateur & Developers Treasure Trove

But the bigger community are websites that run the WordPress scripts for their own business websites and domains – Using the coding freely available at www.wordpress.org. We use the powerful WordPress scripts to run this and dozens of other business websites.

WordPress can provide a really nice site for little money, complete with the normal blogging and hierarchical publishing features. It’s robust and stable. Many hosting companies will install it for free. But when WordPress is placed in the hands of us expert developers, can be taken to new heights, ensuring an attractive, very high traffic website that is slick and professional.

The developer community around WordPress, providing smart themes, plugins and custom design services is now massive, growing at record rates. ‘WordCamps’ have sprung up around the globe with expert developers exchanging ideas and tips. Just checkout wordpress.tv

In the hands of developers like us, WordPress sites can be 100% customised in terms of looks and featureset. A leap ahead of the standard ‘themes’ normally seen or purchased online. We will often add in several low cost options, including:

• intelligent webforms; lead tracking
• fancy galleries, effects and sliders
• membership and community sites
• tight integration with social media
• advanced SEO diagnostics, tuning
• super-affordable shopping carts

WordPress – More Affordable Websites that Do More

For a company that needs a new website, it’s usually cheaper to have it built on the WordPress platform, than have the web designer build it all using popular software like Dreamweaver. And of course an intelligent content-managed website on WordPress provides editing and interactive features not possible with any static Dreamweaver-built website! And a WordPress site gets more traffic…

As a developer we love WordPress. It allows us to build a far higher functioning website for our clients, that gets loads more traffic, in around half the time and cost. This simple fact explains it’s rapid growth and why it is now starting to dominate the internet.

More Traffic Too – Google LOVES WordPress

This is the jewel in the crown of WordPress and why it is liked by enlightened SEO gurus. Most CMS platforms inevitably end up as nightmares when it comes to SEO. These CMS sites end up with duplicate pages, poor semantic structures and plainly difficult for Google to index. They can push a huge amount of unwanted ‘noise’ into the Google index, meaning these sites will be pushed well down the search page rankings. Most company owners and even the ‘expert’ developers of these websites are often totally unaware this has occurred. Unble to explain why they’re not ranking well. (Read our earlier article “Save Your Google Ranking“)

In contrast, WordPress, through a superior framework and some superb third-party plugins, provides all the toolsets required to quickly optimise the site and content in a manner that is in accordance with the Google webmaster guidelines and recommendations.

* There is of course nothing stopping companies like Zeald from utilsing WordPress as a website platform offering. However we suspect their pride will prevent them from taking up the opportunity. It must be difficult to admit that website scripts now available for free, are actually better than those that have cost it years of effort and hundreds of thousands to create and then support. Hence they (and others like them) often refer to WordPress as a mere ‘blogging’ tool, whereas in fact today, 2012, it is much more…

Here’s the keynote presentation from the Changing Media Summit 2012, discussing how the Economist magazine is looking to change. There’s great ideas here for local publishers wanting to better embrace online..

The Rise and Rise of eReading

Original article on the Guardian Website.

StopPress – The Three Little Pigs Captured

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But I get wildly different feedback from people on its effectiveness. Some love it and say it works great, others are disappointed, calling AdWords a waste of time and money. Unfortunately 80% of new Adwords users fall into the money wasting category.

So, What’s going Wrong?

As an engineering person, my immediate thought was they way they used it. The people factor is nearly always why a product or service doesn’t seem to work out right. I saw this a lot in my digital printing days. Complex variable print jobs I could get our in 3-4 hours were taking some clients with the same tools 3-4 days who inevitably left everything in the ‘default’ settings. They needed to better understand the tools they had and how to modify the settings to work in different environments.

The real fix is to go out and get yourself Google Certified to run AdWords campaigns. However this is a costly exercise if you’re just running your own business. Even I don’t have the time for this, content to reading a few books and online blogs to work out what’s going wrong.

Outsource Maybe?

The other solution is to let others with the skills do your AdWords campaigns for you. This can make sense, especially if you’re already spending $1000+ per month and getting few returns. Again, I’ve had differing feedback from people that have tried this. Some love it, others say it’s a waste of time. The other problem with this is that these people have to make a living too. Does their cost more than offset the savings made or the extra leads obtained?

What I was after then was a quick independent toolset that could firstly tell me what was wrong and secondly, ideas on how to fix it. One system we stumbled upon recently was www.wordstream.com

Wordstream isn’t particularly cheap if you’re a small/home business, with pricing ranging from US$299-$990 per month. It’s obviously aimed at the medium to large sector. However it did provide me a free tool that gave me a quick analysis of 8 parameters (below) from my AdWords campaign and what I should look at.

No Magic Bullet Yet

But powerful tools like WordStream are no magic bullet. There’s not a ‘FIX ALL’ button and it’s done. It’s simply a powerful diagnostic, reporting and teaching tool that provide real-time data on what’s happening with your Adwords account, comparing it against thousands of other sites. Powerful stuff, but it still requires the user to study the results and then take some manual corrective actions, perhaps setting aside 30-60 minutes per week. Their tutorials and guides certainly help.

Those that appear to miss out in this is the small business owner perhaps budgeting $200-500 per month and getting very few sales leads. Here there are some good online tools, tutorials and books available that can likely make a big impact upon your results.  Email us for the listing.

Don’t Blame the Tools

It’s yet another lesson in not blaming the tools. sure, there are systems out there that don’t work well, with most of their claims coming out of the sales, not technical departments. But the major tools like AdWords really do work, in the hands of an expert or with someone who has taken the time to learn.

Certainly having a good, well optimised website that Google loves, along with equally optimised AdWords campaigns were critical. The right keywords, structure and strategies in place. However there’s a growing trend amongst the SEO fraternity to set up multiple websites for single companies – Not just a handful of company websites around particular products or services, but dozens of websites!

Why do this?

Exact Search Phrase Match

This comes from Googles inherent desire to find an exact match in the search phrase people use. An exact match in a website title, URL and/or page articles. For example, if you’re searching for plumbers in Auckland, then a website that will always be on page one would have the domain name www.aucklandplumber.co.nz or a variation of this

As it happens, this quite plain website does show up high on page one and it also has a high domain authority too, meaning some good on-site and off-site SEO work has been done at some stage.

It’s a good bet this guy gets a lot of enquiries. Googles Adwords tool tells us that around 4,500 search queries per month on this exact term!  (Click on chart, right). I note North Shore Plumber, (a very simple, low cost WordPress site) is doing well too.  Another good domain name is Plumber in Auckland. However because the coding, content and SEO work on this site is lousy, it’s being ignored by Google – Proving that the domain name is but one factor in being found formula. Note this later site actually ‘looks’ better than the North Shore Plumber site, but I suspect gets almost no traffic.

Personal Branding Has a Place, But…

However what if you named your website joesplumbing.co.nz since you want to push your company name and branding, not what people were actually searching for in their area.

I’m not against having strong personal branding, but the Joe’s plumbing website would likely have to spend more time and money to get to page one than aucklandplumbers, assuming all other SEO factors being equal. With online marketing and being found, it’s often the little things that can make a big difference. Again, another good reason to run many websites for the one company. One with a brand focus, and ten others with a search phrase focus.

So, what’s a good strategy for any business when building their online presence? Look for a popular search term in your sector and register a domain name for each. Making it area-specific is always a good idea is the traffic number and figures off Google warrant it.

And building multiple websites (perhaps dozens) need not be costly these days with technologies like WordPress available. Sure, the first site may cost a few thousand, but variations on this site using other domains may only be a few hundred dollars each to establish.

p.s. And Don’t Just Copy

Copywriters must be employed to make the essential text changes for each website that covers the various suburbs or areas. If you don’t Google will see it as duplicate content and penalise you, meaning you’ll never get to page one.

However with expert planning and care, a single small business using this simple strategy could take over the online space in their market niche or local area.  It’s certainly worked amazingly well for those few that have tried it.

It’s Good Math, not just Good Marketing

Actually, all this is largely a mathematical exercise.  We can find out which phrases are popular and the traffic estimates, since Google tells us. From here we know what a good CTR (clickthrough rate) is for both organic and AdWords, (2-5%) and with good website copy and offer, then estimate the number of sales leads and conversions we should have each month (being approx 5% of the click-throughs). All these sorts of things are monitored and used in the world’s leading ecommerce sites, so the methodology is well proven.

we need to be more analytically-focused and less brand-focused.

This means in the plumbing sector, if there is around 20,000 Auckland search enquiries per month, with at least 400 qualified leads arriving at the website and around 5% of these resulting in a sale, being 20-40 conversions. Most of these are New clients too, which makes it even better. .

Now, how many leads and sales did the old yellow pages provide most small businesses? Almost none….

Tragically, few companies are doing the Math around their websites. Most only measure visitors each month with no consistent strategy in place to discuss or improve things. We all need to be more analytically-focused and less brand-focused. We need to understand the hidden numbers around click-throughs, conversions and bounce rates. It’s what the industry leaders do every day….

Every two years, SEOmoz publishes a Search Engine Ranking Factors report, in which it surveys the top SEO minds in the industry, and asks them to rank the different elements that go into search ranking algorithms, from most important to least.

For the first time, SEOmoz also performed primary research this year by conducting 10,271 searches on Google and analyzing specific features of the ranking sites to see which elements correlated to higher rankings. NOTE: Findings show correlation, not necessarily causation.

Details of the report are on the SEOmoz website, but below is a summary.

NEWSFLASH – Your New WebSite Does Not Inherently Attract Traffic

A new website does not magically get traffic or a high search page result, even if your design is great, content is amazing and keywords seem fine. These ‘on-site’ factors are under 30% of the formula to a high page one search result. It’s not enough.

All that money spent on the getting the visual look and copywriting does not guarantee search traffic. Google really cares nothing about the site appearance. Only text, good code and links. Web designers need to learn much more on how Google sees their website not just the company owner or clients.

You must get other websites of high authority to link to you

Most people, including highly talented graphic designers, still think the website look and keywords is all that’s needed to rank high. It’s only a 26% factor at best. The biggest factor (56%) is not your look, content, keywords or even the code structure, but all the ‘off-site’ stuff, being how to get other websites of high authority to link back to you. This includes major local and international directories, other reputable industry, education or government websites and blogs, as well as ALL the social channels, including Youtube.

No Traffic? Don’t Blame the Web Designer!

No one ever discusses the formula and work needed to get traffic…

The big problem today is that too often company owners just ‘assume’ this search component and getting traffic is magically included in the website design and development fee. Graphic designers own sales pitch will often make reference to SEO, but keep things vague. ‘Traffic takes time’ they will say, without either party actually discussing the formula and work needed to get traffic…

Actually it’s not the graphic designers ‘fault’ as such. Everyone is making assumptions on what website ‘design’ is all about. What the design and development fee covers. When we think about web design it’s inevitably around the visual look of the site, using tools like Photoshop, html/css editors like Dreamweaver. Some design compaines do have a coding geek around to help. But neither looks at SEO or traffic side. The site must only look good and function well. Getting traffic is another chore entirely. Not their problem.

Real amateurs will throw a few keywords into the site header and wait for Google to send through traffic. Sadly strategy this hasn’t worked since 2004 and the fact that these sites get very little traffic is proof. In 2012 it takes real work, lots more expertise and a good budget to get traffic! Bottom line is, we now need someone else with new expertise to optimise the site code for Google, do keyword analysis, review analytics reports, start using AdWords, build up backlinks, blogs, social networks and more…

Don’t Neglect Your Best Salesperson – Google

To get loads of search traffic, Google expects you to do certain things well

Remember it’s Google that drives 50-70% of new traffic to most websites. Involving coding, SEO and copywriting specialists at the beginning to work alongside skilled graphic designers can have a quick payback and more importantly, a website that gets lots more traffic from day one.

The design element is still critical, ensuring that it impresses people and converts well. But Google is the primary tool (effectively your salesperson) to promote your site and business to the world, or local community – To send you new traffic and customers. But to do that sales job well, Google expects you to do certain things correctly, as detailed in the SEOmoz report.

What’s the One Thing You Should Do?

Unfortunately, there’s no single magic bullet to getting website traffic. No one thing I can tell you to do. Yes, there’s plenty of SEO scams being run that tell you otherwise, promising loads of traffic for little time or little money – Overnight riches. e.g. Good content; Keyword tools; Blogging; Local Directory listings; Backlinks; Social Media etc. Everyone has an angle and barrow to push. Like most in business I get several of these suspect emails every week promising more traffic to my website and more leads…

But in reality, as shown in the above research, there’s many, many links in our rags-to-riches chain to get traffic and new business leads. And like a chain, one broken link can undo your other good work and investments.

But it’s ALL important
There’s no heros here

For example, I have one new client who has loads of inbound links and great social media work done by a colleague, plus they thought they had good website content. Yet their lesser competitors frequently ranked higher than them in a search. Why? The internal semantic coding structure and the keyword choice of their aging website is so bad that Google simply didn’t know what the site was about, which pushed down their search page position…

Yet this site looks fine in a browser. We’re recommending upgrading their site to an optimsied WordPress CMS, which has very ‘Google-friendly’ coding, which I’ve calculated will double their traffic within a few months.

As I said earlier, let’s actually start discussing the formula and work needed to get traffic, based upon a logical analysis and a real plan.  I can run a free website analysis for you that looks at your keywords, structure, backlinks and site authority. From here we can make informed decisions based upon the facts, not hype. email zn.oc.gnitekramlatigidnull@nivek

Extracts from the SEOmoz Report – Notes for Web designers and developers

Overall Ranking Factor Importance – Following is a breakdown of the highest-ranking factors, and the overall importance each has on a site’s ability to rank on a search engine result page (SERP), according to the experts. The order of the bullets contained in each section is based on importance.

Inbound Links — 42% of SERP Impact

• Number of unique websites that are considered important by search engines — have a high PageRank or mozRank — that link to a site or page. This is the highest-ranking factor when it comes to a website’s ability to rank for a search query.
• Number of unique inbound links that contain relevant keywords as the anchor text.
• Distance (how many links removed) the site is from a “trusted site,” such as a government (.gov) or university (.edu) site.
• Quantity of unique web pages (not to be confused with websites) linking to a site or a page.
• Topical relevance of a web page linking to a site or page.

Keyword Usage — 26% of SERP Impact

Domain Level – Search engines do look for:

• Keywords in the domain and subdomain of a website.
• Order of keywords used first in the domain or subdomain (e.g. www.keywordABC.com will rank better than www.ABCkeyword.com).

 The On Page / Site Content Factors

It’s good on-page keyword optimisation, structure and page elements that’s critical:

• Page Title — The earlier that the keyword is used the better.
• Internal Link Anchor Text — Keyword is in the anchor text of internal links (links on your web pages to other pages on your site).
• URL — Keyword is in the page URL (e.g. example.com/keyword).
• Headlines (H1 tags) — Keyword appears first within the H1 tag.
• External Anchor Text — Keyword is in the anchor text of external links (links to other websites) on the page.
• Content — Keyword appears in the “content” area of a web page, within the first 100 words.
• Related Terms — The page includes terms related to the keyword (e.g. keyword = “camera”; related terms = “lens,” “photo,” etc.)
• Image Alt Text — Keyword included in image alt text tags.
• Sub Headlines — Keyword present in sub headlines (H2 tags); H3 tags are less significant.
• First Word Body Text — Keyword appears as the first word in the body section of the page.
• Keyword density (number of times a word appears on a page) – This is still a factor, but less important than it once was.

Social Media Links — 7% of SERP Impact

• The SEO experts agree that the twitter network does impact on search results. Specifially, the authority of a user tweeting links and the quantity of tweets to a page.
• Facebook shares of a page.
• Authority of the user who is sharing the links.
• Votes and comments about a site on social bookmarking sites (e.g. Digg, Reddit, etc).
• Authority and quantity of links shared on Google +

It’s important to point out that SEOmoz’s primary correlation research found Facebook shares, activity, comments and likes to be the four highest social correlations to search engine rankings, with Tweets being fifth.

Brand Popularity — 7% of SERP Impact

Brand popularity also plays a significant role in search engine rankings. According to the experts, the most importact factors are:

• Search volume for a brand name.
• Quantity of brand mentions on websites and social sites.
• Volume of visits to brand sites based on the data collected by search engine browser tool bars, sugh as Google Toolbar
• Citations for the domain in Wikipedia or similar.
• Claimed Google Places / maps / profile pages.
• Active accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Other Important Factors

• Unique, fresh content across the entire site. Blogs are good since site owners can post every day or week.
• Bounce rate as tracked by the search engines. This refers to visitors that go to a site and then use the back button to return to the SERP. The lower the bounce rate, the better. A figure under 30% is the ideal.
• Click through rate to your site on SERPs for relevant keyword searches.
• Number of error pages. This should be as close to zero as possible.
• Length of time you’ve owned a domain name — the longer, the better.
• Site page load time. Faster sites will achieve higher rankings. Cheap hosting has a cost

According to Google, who have done expert analysis, most business websites are not optimised for mobile devices. They take too long to load and are poorly laid out, with users either waiting too long or having to zoom and scroll to get the needed information.

Google recently introduce a new website to help.  www.howtogomo.com Check it out.

We’re failing – and it’s costing sales

Our own analysis indicated that under 5% of sites here pass the test and somewhat ironically, restaurant sites are some of the worst offenders. Why is this? It’s because most websites are built using old, dated architecture and no thought for the mobile user. It is assumed that the mobile browser will somehow handle it.

The other options is to have your own Mobile App. In the US these are very popular and they produce bottom-line results too. Once costing thousands and months of work, for small businesses like restaurants, these can now be built quickly and for a relatively low cost.

For a quote on upgrading your business for the mobile user, email me at zn.oc.gnitekramlatigidnull@nivek

They provide expert systems for businesses and agencies that run and expertly track both online and offline campaigns for clients across all media. i.e. Printed direct mail, print and web display ads, Google Adwords, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, Mobile, eMail Marketing etc.

How far behind business thinking is here was loudly demonstrated by a comment from a retail client of ours  this week, who amongst other items, sells Nike products. Word is that within Nike, when it comes to online marketing at least, it’s all about setting up e-Storefronts and using Facebook. Blogs and other online channels are not working they say… Yeah, right.

My client then questioned their current emphasis on their blog (which gets hundreds of hits per day and has many thousands of readers). Should they focus on an online store and their Facebook page? The problem here is that everyone is still looking for the next big thing or bandwagon to hitch on to. The ONE thing that will magically bring them instant sales and new customers.

More Channels Means More Leads

But the world (and customers) don’t work this way. There’s no single magic fix available. No simple shortcut to success online, be it using Blogs, Facebook or email. Customers use multiple channels to connect with their suppliers or retailers. Many use Google, Blogs or email to keep informed.  Others prefer Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, or a mix of the above. We should all realise this and avoid ‘closing down’ or dismissing any marketing communication channel as unimportant – Even print and the old telephone.

…we should be looking at how we use ALL channels, simultaneously

Instead of jumping from one channel to another to find ‘the best’, we should be looking at how we use ALL channels, simultaneously... It’s what Dukky clients do, and it produces stunning results.

Why isn’t cross-channel marketing popular?

So, why hasn’t cross-channel taken off? The problem, is that these campaigns take time and skills to plan, and then implement. You need as many geeks in the planning room as you do creatives – And they seldom get along, explaining why the big creative-driven agencies like to market one channel and campaign at a time.  They simply can’t understand the need for complex workflows, analytics or data mining applications. Can’t see how it can be used to grow sales – To most it’s all nasty numbers and math, not lovely art.

p.s. I guess from the agency or graphic artists viewpoint,  it’s always been easier to sell the visuals and wow factor, than to sell figures or results – Unless of course you’re selling to an accountant or the company owner. Maybe this explains why online hasn’t taken hold in many small business sectors. Business owners are still awaiting the payback details. Something beyond the fancy visuals…

Read also:

1. eMail Marketing Shortcuts – Seth Godin
2. Show me the money (with more channels)
3. 15% more sales with cross-channel

For many businesses, promoting themselves online is a new experience and process too. But it’s no longer a simple management decision about ‘building a website’ based upon their old company brochure, then giving the job to a local web designer. Online promotion today is a totally different animal to the old internet and the offline world of radio, TV and print.

The simple, ‘let’s build a new website’ strategy and hand responsibility over to a web designer is doomed to fail. Creative design is never enough. The elements and decisions that need to be made to successfully promote a business online are mind numbing. (See chart).

Today companies successfully promoting themselves online will still involve a graphic designer. Visuals and branding are the first step, but thereafter these skilled designers have only a minor role to play.

As the new website must be content-managed, a good WordPress/CMS developer is needed early on to convert the static design, ensuring the site is well coded, Google-friendly and interactive with all the right forms, a blog etc

High traffic, sales-focused websites also need a good copywriter or marketer to optimise the message, offer and content, together with an SEO guru that ensures the site ranks high on Google, who also takes care of the Analytics, Keyword and Adwords management.

And when all this is in place there’s email marketing, social media, CRM, Video and mobile toolsets to consider, each playing a major role in boosting site traffic and sales over time. But bringing all this together at once can result in a needlessly complex and costly project. Introducing new tools and marketing systems is never easy. Arguments on what to do next are also common. Everyone has a ‘friend’ (or relative) with an opinion and a once promising web project can go off the rails very quickly. 

Obviously, someone needs to take charge. A champion, with the right vision and guidebook, to keep things on track. Able to work to a pre-defined plan as well as monitoring results. Not be swayed by any single voice. But where does one start? How can it be made affordable? Many SMEs can’t afford to employ all these experts, especially with total costs of the ‘full package’ exceeding $30,000 pa.

Why is it this hard? Is there a worksheet available?

The secret for these types of projects is to do it in stages, over a 12 or 24 month timeframe. Details will be revealed next month in part two of this three-part series…. It’s really a question of defining a game plan that everyone adheres to and gets involved with.

p.s. It’s little wonder that businesses don’t do online well and become disheartened by the apparent complexity of the web. Many wish for the simple days where you left marketing in the hands of the yellow pages, radio or local newspaper reps and maybe printed a few brochures, then waited for the phone to ring…. Those days are long gone… However the rewards for those that build an online plan and execute well are immense. Far higher than was ever possible with traditional offline media. 

Yet mention to any small business owner that they’d have to set aside around $6,000 per annum for SEO, which help to be found online, and they won’t believe you.  After all, websites can be built for a few thousand and most web designers state these sites are “SEO optimised”.

SEO Optimised – What it really means

Web developers who claim that their website is ‘SEO optimised’ are just saying that Google will find and index the site – NOT how well you will rank or  how many people will find you each week. Good developers will include some keywords and metadescriptions for each page, but these are just the basics required today. Perhaps 20% of what’s needed.

SEO is often oversold. Many offshore SEO gurus especially use fraudulent techniques, telling you that they will get you ranked high for some specific search terms. Yet these often result in few sales leads simply because almost nobody uses these terms. They have fulfilled their assigned task, but not improved your bottom line or sales results. This is common.

All websites need some additional, specialist SEO work as well as regular, fresh content to allow them to be found in a Google search – To have a large number of pages that get ranked on page one of a Google search for a wide variety of relevant keywords and phrases. The initial cost for this SEO work can easily range from $600 – $6,000. After this initial work, it then has to be monitored and tweaked each month. The net, and Google, is a dynamic environment. What works today may not work tomorrow when it comes to being found.

It takes time and money

This is what businesspeople find frustrating. They have a new website built and expect instant results. It can take weeks, usually months of work to get most sites ranked high in Google, often supplemented with pay-per-click AdWords.

It’s an on-going project. Large, popular websites will often have a person who does this work full time.  However small businesses often cannot afford a full time person for this, and must outsource, preferably not to India, but to local experts. Most will do an expert analysis of your site and market, them provide an initial and monthly cost. If you want results, then it won’t be cheap, but it will work. I tell most small business to set aside around $300-500 per month initially, which is similar to what many spend on traditional local marketing like radio, classifieds, yellow pages etc. However done well, online can produce far better results than traditional radio or print marketing.

More clicks or more business?

Note that it’s not just about getting the Google traffic and website hits. Your content and offer must be compelling for these clicks to turn into business results. Your SEO expert can’t be expected to do this bit. Your marketing or salesperson must work out and have systems that ‘engage’ your customers and prospects.

It’s more technical now. Remember, in the old days you just paid the Yellow pages and local classifieds to provide you new business leads through listing and display ads and waited for the phone to ring. Now that nobody looks at Yellow or local newspapers as much. Its your [WordPress] website, SEO and AdWords that do the job.

p.s. If you’d like a free analysis of your website and an honest quote for SEO work, email me at zn.oc.gnitekramlatigidnull@nivek

When developing websites there’s a similar one: Fast, Cheap, Effective. Pick any two

His topic was around the use of cheap design themes and amateurs building their own websites. It often falls back to professional developers to fix these nightmares when they don’t work and get no traffic.

Beware the Fast + Cheap Combo

Fixing up the cheap-quick solution has happened to me several times. The worst was a Joomla CMS installation last year. I quoted for a few days work as part of an annual ($2,000) coding update and design makeover for this large client. Instead, they utilised their new, quite bright marketing assistant, who self-taught herself how these things work as well as selecting a new design theme off template monster.

Almost 5 months later and some quiet nagging from me, they gave up and employed me to ‘help out’ as she was hitting brick walls. I was kind and only charged the $2k, but realistically, it took me longer to fix her work, than if I’d done it myself from scratch. Some of the illogical content structure she setup I could not really fix unless I spent a lot longer on the project. This is often the case and why most professionals in any trade will charge more when DIY experts have had a go, no matter how well intentioned. I’m reminded of a slogan in an automotive  workshop, left. It’s a rate chart I’m now applying for myself.

There’s thousands of suppliers that will  provide a cheap, seemingly easy shortcut to your own business website. Say how easy it all is to get started. One option I recommend for family sites is www.weebly.com The reason I like it is simply because it doesn’t get traffic and hence perfect for home use or somewhat private viewing. But there’s thousands like this. Sales pitch is always superb and comforting. Even Yahoo and the likes of MYOB have some instant website offerings, that suck.

If you read my recent Yellow Pages website review, one could almost put these ‘professional’ offerings into this category, even though it is not strictly DIY.  There’s several advanced eCommerce providers around too. Some of these, like BigCommerce,com are superb in the hands of a professional developer, but for the newbie, can be a real challenge. One of these I spent one hour on to resolve a minor layout issue she had tried to fix for months by reading the many tutorials.

Fast and Cheap comes with Hidden Costs.

Not only can they take up loads of personal time, they’re seldom, if ever effective. Sometimes they can be easy to update and even ‘look nice’. But slick features or design alone will never bring you traffic or sales results. Good coding, content and SEO needs to be in the mix too. I find those with a little IT or marketing knowledge are often the worst offenders, since they don’t want to get to a point of asking for help. Even though the technology is improving, the internet is becoming a more complex beast every day. It’s not what we see on our screens, it’s what’s hidden beneath that differentiates the winners from the rest.

Bottom line is these amateur, self-built sites almost never rank well in Google and from a branding perspective, are too often seen as an amateur effort, which can affect sales and credibility.  The urge to save money and do it ourselves is costing everyone business.

Recalling my 7 years working in the marketing department of a big NZ corporate, any online or print marketing was always about branding. In spite of the large amount of money spent, we could seldom attribute particular sales to an actual marketing promotion. This it seems, is the norm… With just a few notable exceptions, companies with 100+ staff often struggle to get things done in a quick and efficient manner when it comes to online or advertising. The sweet spot for online marketing, it appears, are those smaller companies with just 10-35 employees.

Branding Doesn’t Get You Much Website Traffic

Promotions and marketing for branding alone is a luxury small business cannot afford. Small business must get a return on every dollar spent and hence need to look at online marketing quite differently from their bigger competitors – Be more focused upon results and customer service. This flexibility means it’s becoming common for small businesses to do great online if they plan it well. They can end up with many more sales leads from being high on page one of a Google search result – their far bigger competitors at the bottom.

Corporate email promotions have the wrong emphasis too, with poor content and very low conversion rates. I’ve long programmed my email system to put these in the trash. They’re still in the old world of ‘push marketing’, not customer engagement. This presents opportunities for nimble small businesses to do better, on a limited budget – Propel them past their bigger competitors.

Here’s the quick summary on the six key areas small biz should focus on to get more leads and sales in 2012:

• Write weekly, engaging website content. (Provide helpful stuff, not just product promos. Use WordPress. Hire a copywriter.)
• Have an SEO strategy – Adhere to modern practices. (This is a vital, but complex area – Get me to help set it up)
• Dump the Yellow Pages – Use Google Adwords (Done well, AdWords has 5-10x the return of Yellow, Finda or Gopher)
• Monitor Website Analytics to help tune your promotions (Critical – I can provide you easy-to-understand weekly reports)
• Build up and engage with your Facebook community (Several tutorials available, or outsource to specialists)
• Build mailing lists – Have weekly mailouts with a follow-up strategy (Easy way to boost sales and leads. In-house or outsource)

Follow-up is the Key

That last item where I mentioned the term ‘follow-up’ is perhaps the hidden gem in all this. Few companies, large or small, do good follow-up. (Ourselves included). Today there’s lots of ways to track who opens your emails and visits your website. A strict follow-up strategy via personal emails and phone calls is one of the most cost-effective ways to turn visitors, into lifelong customers.  Read my recent ‘Salespeople – Be Gone’ article for some more common sense ideas on this topic. (click here)

If you want details on how to implement all this, give us a call on 09 889 0785 or email zn.oc.gnitekramizenull@nivek

The above results come from a project done by an expert colleague in the US. But sadly, this seldom happens, as the goals for most website rebuilds is around ‘the look’. It’s somehow assumed that more traffic will magically follow! Yeah, right

Most people, especially company owners, still see the company website as a brochure, not a dynamic marketing tool needing constant care and investment – This old brochure mindset means there’s no strategy or funds made available for website SEO, promotion or marketing of the website – Which means only a modest, if any traffic improvement… Business owners are puzzled why the $5,000 or more they invested in the site update gives them no more website traffic or sales leads…

So, how do you get these 300%  traffic improvements from a re-build? Firstly, recognise that the site look or visual design has nothing to do with getting more traffic. It may help get conversions once people arrive as a professional looking site provides some peace of mind and confidence. But the look contributes little to gaining new traffic via any search (since 50-70% of traffic to the site will be via a Google search). It’s far more important the site structure, content and coding be clean, able to be easily indexed by Google. (read more)

Assuming we’ve a good back-end structure, here’s my ‘to do’ list for new website owners.

• Monitor Bounce Rates – After 30-60 days of website activity, check out your site’s bounce rate using Google analytics. Bounce rate tells us the number of people that leave your site immediately after arriving. Generally, the goal is to keep this below 30% for each page on the site. An examination of keywords and content provides the clues to what’s going wrong.
• Monitor & Adjust Keywords – Both Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools provides loads of data to tell us what’s happening. Webmaster Tools indicates what searches you show up on and Analytics will show you want happens when someone clicks through to your website from those keywords. Set a priority of action items based on your most important keywords. We also have our own expert SEO tools that monitor where you sit for Google page one ranking and keywords, against your competitors.
• Post Regular Articles – Search engines and visitors want to see fresh content. It gives both a reason to return to your website. Fresh content means adding or updating articles. Try to add new blog posts on a weekly basis. WordPress sites make this easy – And Google rewards you with traffic.
• Have a Link Building Strategy – Search engines look at who is linking to you and their importance. Quality prevails over quantity. You will need inbound links to many of your pages as possible to be able to up your ranking on competitive keywords.
• Use Pay per click – This is a great way to get traffic in a hurry. Googles amazing AdWords remains one of the best ways to quickly generate traffic and sales within days, not months. The trick is not just the words chosen, but to personalise the Ads, linked through to special offer landing pages on your website.

It’s a reminder that most of the real work to gaining website traffic comes AFTER the site is built. As we’ve said many times before, at least the same amount of time and money needs to be allocated to website marketing and traffic generation, as is set aside for the original design and building. Unfortunately this seldom occurs.

Ref: 12 Reasons Google Hates You

An independent investigation into the NZ Yellow Pages New Online Services

Yellow Pages new CEO, Scott Pomeroy has a grim task ahead. Transforming Yellow into a true online marketing services provider. One of his first stated goals is to work closer with Google and they recently signed up to become a Google AdWords Reseller. Earlier Yellow CEOs talked about working with Google too. Here’s an article dating back to 2009 which just resulted in Yellow using Google maps technology.

Yellow, Selling Google Services?

Yellow Australia (owned by Sensis), signed up as an AdWords reseller a year ago. However the success of this arrangement is unclear and seldom reported on. Like Yellow here, they’re trying everything they can to stay relevant and in the game.

Frankly, I can’t see it working well, especially in the first year. There will be major conflicts between the old and new. Working out the sales incentives will be the big one. Yellows own products will have a sales rep commission that will be hard to match with Googles AdWords, unless they mark up Adwords beyond market rates. And what happens when business clients discover this, or realise that the say $300/month they spent on their new Google AdWords, is getting them 5x more leads than their current $300/mth Yellow Pages listing, which they’re still locked into? Selling a vastly superior competitor offering, alongside your own outdated one isn’t easy…

YellowToolBox – New Online Products and Services

Aside from re-selling Googles Adwords, the other new ‘product’ to come out is Yellowtoolbox, hastily thrown together over the last couple months. They only purchased the domain name in August, meaning there wasn’t a lot of planning involved. And it shows.

Toolbox is the place NZ business and Yellow customers are asked to go to for an affordable website and a social media presence. In concept it’s a good idea and there’s much hype around it from Yellow reps, but few real-world results yet with only a handful of their 100,000 small biz clients signed up. I suspect there will be a lot of special deals, time payment arrangements and service bundling, which Yellow has a history of to ensure clients are locked in – Preferably to both their online and obsolete print offerings.

The Yellowbox site itself is visually lively, but the coding is poor and SEO non-existent. It’s slow to load and virtually invisible on Google.

If companies don’t have the skills to grow their website traffic, they can just throw money at it

It could take a long time to get this new website to show up in normal Google search result for website design, video or Facebook marketing. The Yellowlocal website has the same problem. Just because they have ‘the brand’ and some cash means nothing online when it comes to getting traffic. Everyone starts at the bottom. Website traffic has to be earned. Somewhat ironically, the solution to running any new website with a poor online profile and crappy SEO coding, is to advertise using Googles Adwords, which Yellow does an awful lot of.

NBR reminded me recently that Yellow are still the largest single buyer of AdWords in NZ. Yellow likely spends tens of thousands every week promoting it’s own second-rate yellow.co.nz online directory on Google. On average, they run around 60 different ads at a time on Google, directed to different categories on their Yellow online directory website. It likely boosts their traffic considerably.

Now there’s even more cash pouring into promoting its new website services, with cost-per-click ranging from $2 to $5 each!  I’ve recorded 66 different ads displayed for the new toolbox site, examples below.  (Now they’re an AdWords reseller, will they get discount? If so, at what point in the future will Google expect to make up the shortfall?)

But Google is in a win-win game. If companies (or their hired web designer-developers) are lacking SEO skills and ignore Google’s guidelines, the result is a website that can’t be found.  i.e. A low ranking and little traffic. Website owners will often end up buying search traffic instead, using Googles popular pay-per-click AdWords service.

High Google Rankings and Expert SEO

The Yellow websites sales pitch video quite clearly says “…You’ll Get High Google Ranking… Expert SEO…” Good to hear. But we have definative data that shows the opposite is true in most cases. Should we advise these clients they’ve been short-changed, or should I tell the Commerce Commission? Maybe the SEO and High Google Ranking is an option?

Yellows 12, proudly displayed showpiece client sites, aside from some commendable Youtube efforts, are mostly cheap designs, poorly optimised for Google search. In fact it was hard to find keywords or pages they ranked well for. The best was fashion-recycle that ranked for 2 keyword phrases. Unfortunately, their main competitor ranked for 79. Like Yellows own toolbox site, it means these sites will seldom show up on page one of an organic search for phrases that could bring them new business. The only solution to this is to have the client spend thousands more on specialist SEO work and/or buy some AdWords online advertising.

A Cunning Plan Maybe?

Maybe this is the secret strategy. e.g. Sell badly coded, non-optimised websites to guarantee that customers will at some point need to sign up for the more costly Yellow-supplied Google AdWords. If true, it’s a really cunning plan, as Blackadder would say…. However I suspect there’s really no plan at all. They’re floundering around in a new market they know little about, with low quality offerings, using their name and reputation to woo hapless customers in.

But Yellow aren’t the only people building cheap, poorly optimised websites. Most NZ small business websites running today fit into this category. If they build up their know-how and sales skills, this is a nice opportunity for Yellow and their new AdWords service.

Or Maybe We’re Dreaming…

Are Yellow grasping at straws? With limited budgets and skills available within the company for website building or SEO work, Yellow are likely doing what most big corporates do in this situation. Promote a new digital service, then outsource as much as possible to local amateurs, or to India, to maintain margins. Much of the AdWords work, if it does take off, will probably be done in India or the Philippines. It’s a low risk strategy, since these contracted staff can be quickly dispensed with if the new services don’t work after 6 or 12 months.

Sales is not so easily outsourced. Building the skills to sell adwords and online will be a challenge. Selling or re-signing people up to simple entries in print and online directories is one thing. But the selling of Websites, Social Media and AdWords another. I worked for Xerox for many years as they migrated from copiers to digital printing, forced upon them by technological change. Most of their salespeople struggled to adapt. It took more than just a handful of new product training sessions.

Google AdWords – Who Benefits the most?

It’s not just about profit margins, but also advertising effectiveness.

What’s not often realised, is that the cost, quality and results of AdWords campaigns varies widely. User polls tell us that around half of AdWords users love it and get amazing returns, the other half say it’s erratic and far too costly. Why is this?  Margins aside, it largely depends upon the skills and instructions given to the person setting it up, then maintaining it each month. There’s also numerous tricks around the offer, landing pages, CTR optimisation, use of forms, analytics etc. Done right, it’s much more complex than making the old paper or digital display ad, which is what Yellow staff are familiar with.

For example, we recently rebuilt a clients costly $1,500/mth Adwords campaign, that resulted in a  $700 per month saving, for the same number of click-throughs, in this instance being over a 1,000 per month. It won’t be in Yellows (or Googles) best interests to setup and provide such super-efficient, highly optimised campaigns! What’s best for the client, isn’t always ideal for the service provider. Financially it would make sense for Yellow to set up ‘less effective’ AdWords for their existing clients, be it deliberately to gain more income, or through plain lack of skills. 

To Know the Future, Look to Auz

For a look of things to come, here’s a commentary from Australia last year entitled Yellow Pages Scam. It’s a conversation between a customer and their Yellow Pages (Sensis) rep selling Google services. Expect similar ‘misrepresentations’ here in NZ – Especially when they pitch their new Yellow Page Website offerings that supposedly have good SEO. (Yeah, right). The average customer will be totally confused and likely just take Yellow at their word.

It’s all profit-focused. In one case AdWords was ‘resold’ by Yellow Pages Australia (Sensis) who billed AdWords at $27,000 pa, which should have cost around $500-700/month if the client had done it themselves. Resellers can legally do this. New, naive small business customers just don’t know enough to argue. Commentators suspect that Sensis is targeting industries with low tech knowledge. They’re also informing them they have a ‘special’ relationship with Google and can guarantee them a number one ranking…

What’s the Yellow Offering? Is it too Late for NZ?

As Scott Pomeroy, CEO of Yellow Pages NZ said in that recent interview. “The success of it [Adwords] will now depend on how well Yellow executes.”  Based upon their execution of their new Toolbox website services, I’m not optimistic. Yes, there is a dire need for a major organisation with a big client base to sell AdWords here. I’m just not convinced that Yellow was the best option for Google.

It’s difficult to see what Yellow has on offer that isn’t done better (and cheaper) by someone else. What’s their value proposition? Yellow have dabbled in lots of new technologies and services over the years. In spite of the money spent and grand promises made, none have been a standout success, or even turned a profit. Years back, profits from the print division would carry things through. Now that print is dead and cashflow has dwindled, options are limited. They missed their opportunity window.
They should have taken the deal offered by Google back in 2006 when Google wanted access to the Yellow Business listings and database which would have been worth a lot to Google. It could have been a really great partnership too, but Yellows pride likely got in the way. They thought they could actually compete with Google in the online space…. Now they’re on the back foot, begging.

End of an Era

It’s looking like a sad ending on the horizon for what was a fine NZ-owned company I once loved. I sincerely hope the Yellow-Google Adwords ‘service’ does work out for them and their clients, but there’s a big learning curve ahead for all. New services always take twice as long to get into profit than any business or marketing plan allows for. Two years is typical. Can Yellow, in their fragile financial state, really wait that long? I’m less optimistic over their new toolbox products, which will appeal only to the most desperate or gullible.

Many Yellow customers have been suitably ‘conditioned’ to have low expectations

Sadly, there’s lots of people out there who happily take Yellow at their word and not want to know about all the geeky SEO stuff I’ve outlined above. They trust Yellow. I also suspect that many of their customers are used to paying out hard-earned money each month, for few returns. They’ve been ‘conditioned’ to have low expectations, which may be what will keep Yellow in the game longer than they deserve.

Yep, it’s hard work turning around an old, fading corporate and keep customers happy. Good luck Scott. You’ll need it.

p.s. This time last year I predicted the demise of Yellow pages, after they posted one of the biggest corporate losses in NZ history.  Read about if on my Ezimarketing website. A year on and little has changed. The banks simply can’t keep Yellow afloat forever…. The really interesting factor is Scott Pomeroy. He has previous experience with struggling companies and may be in the role just preparing the groundwork for Yellow to shut up shop. He was the CEO of a failed Yellow Pages Publishing operation in the US.. Obviously, if the Yellow board was really serious about online initiatives being the way forward, they would have appointed someone with a more appropriate background.