Category Archives: Marketing

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.

What the heck is CX, anyway?

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Customer Experience, or CX,  is the study of how customers relate to brands, products and businesses on emotional level. It’s being hailed as a “new discipline,” but CX has been been around a very long time.

Take, for example, department stores. These early pioneers of customer experience found that displaying their goods in a beautiful environment did more than merely showcase the wares; opulent surroundings made the customers behave differently. If   a customer was  in a palace, that customer was likely spend more money… and enjoy himself or herself doing it.  Because of this discovery, department stores came to resemble miniature palaces and offered generous credit terms and liberal return policies to facilitate liberal spending.  Increased competition also spurred the merchants to offer various premiums, some of which are still enjoyed today. Where would Christmas be without the Macy’s Parade or the ubiquitous depart store Santas? You can see customer experience alive and well in any men’s department that is decked out with wood paneling and armchairs. Although Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack sell identical merchandise, the Rack’s warehouse-like environment conveys none of the branded splendor experienced in the flagship stores. These stores function as a semi-branded clearance outlet, offering a deliberately shabby customer experience that drives home the emotion message that the shopper is getting a great deal. It’s still Nordstrom, but a cut-rate one.

These stores learned, too, that loyalty could span generations and affect whole families. My grandmother knew certain New Yorkers more divided by the Macy’s vs. Gimbels  rivalry than by politics. You could forgive Uncle Herbie for being a Communist, but not for shopping at Macy’s.

The auto industry knows something about opulence and brand identity… make the customer feel like a big shot and suddenly price is not as much of a factor. General Motors knew this when they began buying up small, independent manufactures and rolling them under the same umbrella. A man’s first car is a Chevy and his last is a Caddy. Brand loyalty for a lifetime… or longer. You are what you drive, and money is only one of the considerations. This became all the more prevalent with the immense profitability of auto financing options.

Customers are loyal to brands they value. And value is far, far more than cost. It’s more than build quality, it’s more than materials. Value is, in essence, an emotional satisfaction of money well spent. Value is a “tangible intangible.” You know value when you see it, and the owners of brand names will go to any lengths to protect that value.

Restaurants, too, have long championed customer experience. Food, location, décor and service all play important roles in whether or not a restaurant succeeds, but there are often other intangibles at work.  Loyal restaurant customers will endure long lines, poor service and wrong orders if they perceive that experience of dining there is valuable. Sometimes  that can be because of a good review, but more often it’s word of mouth from other customers who have crossed over from loyalty to sheer evangelism. Food is food, but some experiences are more valuable than others. Anyone who has dined at an exclusive Manhattan restaurant will tell you the same.

But some restaurants have wild success while many others fail. (While not nearly as drastic as is commonly believed, 65% of new restaurants fold up within three years of opening.) The food may be equally good, the staff equally efficient, yet one place will thrive while another shutters. It certainly isn’t because the owners want to fail, nor is it because they are unwilling to give the customers what they want.

It’s because they simply don’t know. Customers will stop coming in, and the reason will elude the owner all the way up to the bitter end. It may be the parking lot, it may be the bar. By the time the owner starts wondering, it is often too late. The point is: if you don’t pay attention, you won’t know that you are failing until you fail.

Let’s take the greatest success story in recent years as a case study. You know who I mean: Apple. Apple did the impossible and not only came back from near extinction, but did so in a market that was completely dominated by a competitive monopoly. It achieved this through its innovative use of customer experience management. Every aspect of the Apple customer experience was designed and refined, from the screws used on the computer cases to the online store, from the type of metal on an iPod to the color of glass in the windows of the Apple Store. Steve Jobs was known as a detail man, but more importantly he was fully aware that attention to detail alone was not enough; it was absolutely vital to determine what the customers felt about the products. Jobs knew that emotions can overrule almost any other aspect of human interaction, even when it comes to technically-oriented decisions such as buying a computer or music player.

In an upcoming article I will address some of the “touch points” that can be monitored and refined to help improve your customers’ experience both on your website and your physical store. In the meantime, feel free to contact me at josh@grapnel.net with any questions or comments. You can also read a bit more about this at http://grapnel.net/cx.html

Whither WordPress?

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I have been using websites as diaries for a very long time… far longer, in fact, than has been practical. I used to hand-code my journal entries in html and then upload them onto the uberhaus.com site almost every night. It was a laborious process, but I got a lot of satisfaction from it. Bear in mind that this was in 1997, the real “olden days” when we thought the world was going to change and everything would be free and open and computer monitors looked more like console TVs than what we have today. (Grapnel’s Bryan White actually was far ahead of the curve, coding a pioneer blogging CMS 1n 1998 for his site Disturbance–but that’s another story).

1997 was the year in which Evan Williams coined the term “blog” and came out with his content management system, Blogger. Anyone could post an online journal, and no coding was required. No HTML. No FTP. It was free, too, so suddenly, everybody with an opinion was willing (if not able) to write their every thought and feeling that would (hopefully) be read by countless millions. Or at least a few dozen, for Blogger had a very loyal community in its early days, and the golden rule was pretty universal. Blog unto others and they will blog unto you. Most of the early bogs were pretty forgettable, and the writers abandoned them after a while. The graveyard of dead websites is well-populated with orphaned blogs.

Still, the standouts developed huge followings, and what we now know as social media was born. Movable Type and TypePad followed in Blogger’s stead, and a real industry began taking off. Blogs became a legitimate (if not accurate) news source, and the advent of the more immediate platforms of Facebook, Twitter and their ilk only spread the influence.

So where did WordPress come in?

One of the more successful early entries was B2, an open source content management system that utilized PHP and mySQL in a slick combination that allowed users to customize the look and feel of their sites without sacrificing functionality. However, you had to know what you were doing, so much of the non-technical bloggers were stuck with limited customization.

Then, in 2003, a “fork” of B2/Cafelog was released by a couple of guys named Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. They called it WordPress. WordPress was different because it included not only a user-friendly content management system but also a plug-in architecture and template system. Now non-technical users could not only choose how their site looked; they could decide how it WORKED.

And that’s not all. Remember, WordPress was (and is) open source. That means anyone could develop for it. Designers. Programmers. Marketers. Yep. I said marketers.

You see, WordPress is much more than a blogging system. It is a rethinking of the way in which websites are constructed. It is truly modular, allowing specific selection of elements based on whatever criteria you set up. Mobile site? Done. SEO heavy? No problem. Landing pages? Yes indeed.

You see, WordPress doesn’t just separate the content of a website from the presentation (a standard website best practice for many years). WordPress is completely modular: every element of the site can be separately controlled and modified without affecting the site as a whole. You can have one set of content with multiple creators and editors that is automatically delivered to users in the format they need at the moment, be it an iPad or a 72″ flat screen monitor. It can be used for commerce, for presentation, for data display, as a gallery, as a projector… pretty much anything you can think of.

And because it’s open source, there are literally hundreds of new plug-ins every week, not to mention a huge array of themes and designs. Many are free, but some of the more advanced components can get expensive (but still a fraction of the cost of custom development). Bryan and I have been involved in all kinds of installation of WordPress from huge multi-pronged sites to simple blog/portfolios.

If you’re interested in weighing the pros and cons of a WordPress installation, feel free to drop us a line. We’re happy to answer any of your questions.

Synergy with Analytics and Marketing

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As I have said in an earlier post, analytics should be a powerful component of your overall marketing strategy from the start. Properly used, they can show you how your customers are reacting to your efforts to attract them. This is great information for a whole host of reasons, not the least of which is to know when you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Nothing feels quite as bad as having to justify a loss incurred by an unsuccessful campaign, particularly if you had tools at your disposal that could have warned you of its ineffectiveness before you were completely committed.

Analytics, therefore, should be factored into online and offline marketing efforts from the very start. To properly set up analytics, though, you need to know the places where they can be of most use. Initially, there are three main areas where they can help:

1.      Keywords

For the uninitiated, keywords are the search words with which users find your site. The right keywords will drive the right traffic to your site  ultimately help both your customers and you by giving site visitors what they want and need.

Analytics provide you with insight into which keywords are effective and which keywords are not. A word or phrase that you believe accurately describes your product may not be  the one used by your customers.  Searches can also be affected by context in which the keyword is used. This is especially true now that Google has implemented Penguin, an artificial intelligence-based system that goes a long way toward assessing websites’ value in the same way as real life customers. (I will address Penguin and its impact for SEO in a later column.)

So which keywords are the best for your site? You can use analytics to easily determine this by checking

  1. Which keywords drive traffic to your site
  2. Which keywords drive conversions
  3. Which keywords drive traffic but no conversions

Determining the difference between numbers one and three will give you the answers you need and will  help you adjust your course.  Check the following:

  1. Does the keyword describe your product?
  2. Is the keyword too broad?
  3. Does your site offer quality content around the keyword?

Keywords can drive traffic but not conversions for a myriad of reasons. For example, say you offer websites and a company doing initial competitive research for a new business searches for “startup business websites”  and comes to your site. If your those are your keywords, the user will come to your site more or less by accident and leave without doing anything. The proper content in the description would allow the user to determine a more appropriate site for their needs,

 

Landing Page Content

One of the greatest assets of any analytics software is the ability to break down your website page by page.  You can see how many people landed on a page, how many people exited a page, where they came from, what keyword they searched to get there, how long they spent on a page and most importantly, you can see if they converted.

By breaking down the top landing pages, you can determine just how customers interact with your website and how with the right design and content, you can give them a great experience.

When thinking about your landing pages, consider the following:

  • What are the top landing pages?
  • Which pages have the highest bounce rate?
  • What pages do people spend the most time on?
  • Which pages lead to the most conversions?

Your home page (index.html)  is usually the top landing page; it typically will also have the highest bounce rate because a bigger net catches more fish, but not all of them are the right kind. The home page is also the most indexed by search engines, literally the front door of your website through which every guest passes. If your home page does not have direct calls to action or clear paths to valuable information, users will go elsewhere.

This is where specific landing pages come in. It is very common to create landing pages that contain less general information and more specific direct calls to action. They can also be linked directly to PPC ads and specific search strings.

Using analytics for your landing pages you can easily determine why they are successful.  What keywords did visitors use to get there?  What type of content is on that page?  What calls to action are you using?  Can this be replicated on other pages?

Remember, determining customer behavior on your site  is just as important as knowing what search terms brought them there.

Buying Cycle

How long is the buying cycle for your product or service?  How many times does a customer visit your site before buying?  What are they looking at during that time?  With an online business and website analytics, this information is not just available, it’s invaluable.

To begin, answer the following questions:

  • How many days after the first visit do people convert?
  • Which pages do they visit during that time?
  • What content do the pages contain?
  • What calls to action are you using?

By knowing where your customers are in the buying cycle, you can really refine your online marketing efforts (this is especially true when it comes to paid search). If you know a typical customer comes to your site and reads 5-7 information-based pages before they convert, you can gear your initial messaging and calls to action around that. Instead of saying “Buy now” you can say “Get more information.”

For paid search campaigns, determine which keywords correspond to which point on the buying cycle and drive users to landing pages with the content they need at that point in the process.  Using the same example we used in the “Keywords” section, drive the person searching “business websites” to a page that provides ideas on creating a business website.

As always, a usable, informative website that has the customer needs will be revisited when they do decide to buy.

Pay Per Click Methodology

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Here is an outline of a successful methodology I have employed in many PPC campaigns for a variety of different clients. Some of these have been small, regionally based companies after specific conversion behaviors (restaurants, brick and mortar retail sales, etc) while others have used PPC as a module of a larger, longer marketing campaign. In all cases the analytics component was crucial to the campaign’s success because it allows tight control of the bidding process of keywords and the ongoing adjustment of the campaign to ensure maximum ROI. This is offered as a checklist, of sorts.

Stage 1: Preliminary Consultation
The most successful pay per click ad campaigns start with a thorough understanding of the business goals and the PPC advertising budget. The includes:

  • An in-depth market sector analysis including trends and drivers.
  • Assessment of the competitive landscape  including an analysis of competitors’ pay per click advertising strategies, budget and success rates
  • An executive summary of the client’s understanding and definite goals that the client can review, modify and sign off on.


Stage 2: Objectives and Expectations

  • Define ROI expectations including click-through rates (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). This can be done using a simple formula of
    SPENDING / CPC  x Conversion Rate = Leads (ROI)
  • Determine reporting requirements and explain metrics used in reporting, file formats, jargon and so forth.
  • Establish the pay per click budget.

Stage 3: Creation of Campaign Assets

  • Determine keywords most appropriate for the client’s specific goals relating to the product, service, desired customer behavior and ultimate strategic goal.
  • Create comprehensive list secondary industry-specific keywords not necessarily contained in the landing pages that can be used in “long-tail” keyword purchases.
  • Define and create Ad Groups, as required.
  • Create PPC advertising copy
  • Create appropriate pay per click landing pages
  • Set up analytics for all pages used in the campaign and determine which reports are most pertinent to the client

Stage 4: Launch

 

  • Upload keywords and creative copy.
  • Double-check all keywords and ads using Google’s online tools.
  • Immediately begin tracking of conversion and ROI.


Stage 5: PPC Management

 

  • Regularly analyze results and adjust campaigns as appropriate.
  • Regularly fine-tune keyword bids and adjust spending as appropriate.
  • Generate and deliver reports detailing pay per click advertising results.

Ad Words Best Practices

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Best Practices for AdWords

(Reprinted from Launch Marketing)

Google processed 11.8 billion search queries in January 2012 and is projected to receive nearly 80% of all online search advertising revenue in 2012. Paid clicks on Google increased over 30% from Q4 2010 to Q4 2011. Certainly advertising on Google is a smart choice for many companies, and while it is easy to set up a campaign, maintaining a successful campaign requires a great deal of time and patience (and a bit of trial and error). Here are a few tips we have for a successful AdWords campaign:

Think like a customer. Ask yourself, “If I was looking for this product, what terms would I search for?” After you’ve created an ad, think “Would I click on this ad if I was searching for this term?” Remember that those searching on Google may not know anything else about your brand besides what they see in your ad and that most ads are only looked at for about a quarter of a second.

Be specific, but not too specific. Especially when beginning an AdWords campaign, be sure to select keywords that are specific enough so that you aren’t spending a large amount of money competing with several other companies. However, don’t be so specific that only a few people will ever search for that term. Using the various match types in AdWords can help.

Google provides several tools that help make this process easier. The Traffic Estimator Tool shows the amount of traffic you can expect to receive with a specific keyword. The Keyword Tool is also very useful. Simply type in a few of your keywords and it will produce ideas for related terms as well as the approximate cost per click you would pay. Export this list to Excel for an easy way to select terms that you want to add to your campaign.

Don’t create it and leave it. AdWords accounts require continuous monitoring in order to be successful as things can change daily. While you can set up custom alerts that can email you if that action occurs, you should still log in to your account at least once each day (even if it’s for a few minutes) to make sure your campaign is performing correctly. Be on the lookout for anything that seems out of the ordinary and fix it as soon as possible.

If it’s not working, change it. Don’t get so attached to your work that you refuse to change it if it isn’t working. Also, don’t wait for an ad to suddenly start getting a higher click through rate. If people aren’t clicking on it, find out why and change it. Possible solutions could include changing the copy or finding a better keyword.

Be sure that you are testing several variations of your ads. This way you aren’t spending all of your money on an ad that may not be very successful. Track the metrics and stop any ads that aren’t performing up to par in order to concentrate your resources on those that are performing well.