Category Archives: Industry Happenings

Penguin is your new taskmaster.

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In 2011, Google released a series of algorithm updates called Panda designed to downrank websites providing poor user experience. Panda observed how users moved through sites by following the logic used by Google’s team of testers. It is, for all practical purposes, an artificial intelligence that ranks sites based on usability (and it’s named for its creator, Navneet Panda, and not the non-bear).

It gets better. In April of this year, Google released Penguin, an important algorithm change that targets web spam. When it finds it, Penguin decreases rankings for sites violating Google’s quality guidelines. You see, sites using black hat SEO tactics like keyword cramming have been junked for years now, but less obvious tactics such as including non-related links in content in an effort to drive traffic to specific sites have been getting past previous algorithms . The result has been shady SEO companies getting results with crappy non-content. The result has been more garbage and less useful information.

penguin_imageThankfully, those days are coming to an end.  Penguin is designed to detect shady techniques and flag sites found using them. You do it, you get warned. You keep doing it and you are out of the club for keeps.

Google says:

Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in web spam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.

 How can you tell if you’re violating the rules?

They key to finding out how this affects your site is Google’s Webmaster Tools. It is highly advisable that site owners monitor their Google Webmaster accounts for any messages from Google warning about past spam activity and a potential penalty. Penguin has impacted about 3.1% of queries (compared to Panda 1.0’s 12%).

Penguin downgrades sites for:

  • Excessive link building with no regard for quality
  • Deceptive doorway pages
  • Lots of keyword stuffing
  • Publishing lots of meaningless content just to get traffic from search engines

This is good move because it will break the endless self-referential SEO efforts linked blogs and canned articles about SEO. Gaming the system in that way will no longer be valuable because Penguin will detect and downgrade sites that do this.

Not to say that in service of this there hasn’t been some collateral damage. Google states that the Penguin update has affected a small percentage of websites, but many Google-centric SEO operations have felt the sting of the re-ranking and have taken a hit. One could surmise that these were the very firms that were causing the problems in the first place with dubious SEO techniques, but who can really say?

This is obviously the wave of the future. Google’s algorithms will be copied by other search engines and improved, artificial intelligence methods will be refined and the methodology of user experience will get better and better. The quick and dirty SEO for SEO’s sake is on its way out. The only thing that will save you: value. Value means quality content and relevant links. Value means ranked authors, recommended articles and legitimate social media linking. Value means that the media will have to have real, validated content.

The first step: write well and write often.

Despite the recent incursion of streaming media, the web is still very much a text-based delivery system. Good writing will always be better than poor writing, if for no other reason than it’s easier to understand. Writing that is done simply to improve search engine rankings is pretty awful, and in the end it is of no value whatsoever. Robo-generated SEO articles are fading fast, and rightly so. This is a boon for people who actually know how to write, and ever better for ones who know what they are talking about.

With each new update, Google is promoting content that really deserves its place in the ranking index. Nonsense content that has been juiced up with keywords will hit the round file, and the URL that carries it will be right behind.

So what is effective writing? Well, grammar is helpful. Wit is also appreciated, but the greatest thing is clarity. Be clear, be logical… and for God’s sake, be brief.  A few tips:

  • Be smart about keywords: Copy  that has been “optimized” by larding every sentence with keywords not only is hard to read, it triggers Penguin’s spam  sensors. Don’t randomly insert the keywords just for the sake of bringing up density. It doesn’t work anymore and was always uncool anyway.
  • Write for your audience: Cracked magazine is a great example of this, as is The Onion. They know what sort of things their readers like and will share socially. If you write for business, use a businesslike tone and write stuff that is pertinent. You can still have personality, but remember that excessive wisecracking in the boardroom is not a good idea if you wish to be taken seriously.
  • Make yourself useful: People use the web as a device as much as a diversion, and if they are going to the trouble to read your writing you owe them some solid information in exchange. The reader gives you their time, so you need to honor that and give them useful information in return.
  • Create content for other websites and blogs: Prepare an editorial calendar for writing articles and guest blog posts that can be published on websites and blogs other than your own. This helps you gain new exposure and earn quality backlinks . Choose appropriate and trusted venues and have at it.
  • Ask questions: If you can generate user responses in the comments, if you can get social media linking, if you can get the conversation started… well, then, the world is your oyster. Comment threads are todays new forums, but that doesn’t mean that forums aren’t alive and well. LinkedIn has a ton of great, business-centric forums that welcome civic discourse. People rely on them for information, and regular contributions can only improve you and your site’s reputations.
  • Create downloadable newsletters and ebooks: When building out landing pages with conversion as the goal, it’s important to give the reader something in return. Regular newsletters are fine, but you can one better by including a variety of pertinent content for readers. Graphs, charts, how-to articles, tips and tricks and other standbys are great content and are always popular. Just be careful that if you use somebody’s original work that you get their permission and give them credit. We are all in this together.
  • Utilize your analytics: Remember, we’re talking the web here so analytic are everything.  If properly set up, you can immediately tell what’s working and what isn’t. Conversion is the watchword for landing pages, so keep a close eye on which conversions are working. Nobody is filling out the form? Take a look and see if you have clear calls to action on the page. Check to see that the form isn’t too long. Make use of landing pages to really promote what you’re offering.

 

Once you are able to establish a good audience, you will find them to be a loyal group. I have several blogs I read every week because I enjoy the writers’ style and personality, and also because the information is usually valuable. Try it yourself and see. It’s not like Google is giving you a choice here.

An Interactive Tragedy Part 1

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Several years ago I worked for a marketing firm that specialized in print for a well-funded, loyal niche market. Agency X had it locked up…  the sales force was recruited straight from the target industry and were well-connected, the loyalty factor in this industry was very high, and the methodology was tried and true. Best of all, the profit margins were astronomical because the actual cost of producing the deliverables was a fraction of the billing. The methodology was a simple ad agency boilerplate:

  • Account executives would set up the appropriate appointments
  • They, along with the creative team, would conduct discovery interviews
  • They would produce what they called a “discovery document” that talked about the nature of the the business as it related to the campaign
  • The document would be presented and then go through some revision cycles until final approval was given
  • The creative team would be dispatched to create assets such as logos, photos, etc. Copy and taglines would be written. At some point focus groups might be used, but more often than not approval was up to stakeholders
  • Final approval of the project, production and delivery.

This model worked fine for branding and printed material. Advertising could also be engaged, as well as video production for message-based commercials.

And then what happened? Somebody mentioned the website. Can Agency X also do our website?

Sure, said the agency. We’ll just hire some web designers. We can launch this site based on the campaign. It will be great.

And they did just that…  Web designers were brought in, billings were increased and everything was hunky dory until one day a client got a look at another agency’s work, an interactive agency’s work, for a competitor. Remember, this is a niche industry, and an insular one at that. The client, being loyal, asked the account exec at Agency X why this competitor’s website was so superior when they were paying Agency X top dollar.

Um.

Thus began a long and disastrous attempt to educate the account executives about the vast differences between interactive media and its more traditional counterpart. The thing that was hard for them to grasp was the fundamental difference between traditional and interactive media: the user. In interactive media, the user needs to be included in the earliest conversations. A new role was defined to help facilitate this inclusion. Enter the interactive strategist.

Right from the beginning there was trouble.

So a guy walks into an office and offers UX services…

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Doing a first-time UX consultation, I sometimes feel like an auto mechanic walking into a buggy shop circa 1905 and trying to tell the carriage maker that the horses will soon be outclassed. It’s hard to consult from a defensive position, even when the writing is on the wall that things are changing. The main issue is that the service I offer is often seen as either redundant to current efforts or entirely unnecessary… or even nonexistent.

Even with the prevalence of social media in our culture and the fact that customers are becoming extraordinarily sophisticated in their methods and ability to access online media, there still remains a level of disconnect. The old methodologies of dealing with customers is amazingly stuck in the past. It is often driven by the marketing department and utilizes communications techniques used in traditional advertising. The message is broadcast, the results are monitored and changes are made to correct any missed opportunities. Analytics suites and lead tracking software have added useful tools to find and collate information,  but the the overall method itself hasn’t changed in its basic philosophy. One thing that has changed is the speed with which a customer or user can change direction: one click and they are gone, usually for good.

This isn’t because businesses don’t want to change. The technology is everywhere… most people carry a computer in their pocket that is much  more powerful than the most expensive desktop machines of ten years ago. The relationship businesses hope to have with customers through these new devices is clear, but the method being used is, at its root, one-sided.

Brian Solis of Fast Company Magazine wrote in a recent article :

“Rather than examine the role new technologies and platforms can play in improving customer relationships and experiences, many businesses invest in “attendance” strategies where a brand is present in both trendy and established channels, but not defining meaningful experiences or outcomes. Simply stated, businesses are underestimating the significance of customer experiences.

…As smart and connected technology matures beyond a luxury into everyday commodities, consumer expectations only inflate. As a result, functionality, connectedness, and experiences emerge as the lures for attention. For brands to compete for attention now takes something greater than mere presences in the right channels or support for the most popular devices. User experience (UX) is now becoming a critical point in customer engagement in order to compete for attention now and in the future. For without thoughtful UX, consumers meander without direction, reward, or utility. And their attention, and ultimately loyalty, follows. “

It comes back to the simple questions that businesses need to be asking:

  • Who are your customers?
  • Why do they like you?
  • How do they buy from you?

One problem is that marketing departments often believe they know the answers to these questions, but when pressed will admit that there is little empirical evidence to support their beliefs. Creative campaigns are often based on clever concepts, but don’t incorporate engaging experience design. Sometimes this can pay off and a campaign will be incredibly successful, but sometimes it can bomb. It need not be random because a clever idea can be paired with an engaging experience every time…  but only if  it is designed that way from the start.