Archive for the ‘Search Engine Guide’ Category

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Monday I discussed several of the featured speakers from Search Engine Strategies and looked at their search results branding for their names and businesses. It turned out not to be as enjoyable as I had hoped as all of them have very high visibility. Not that I wanted to point out anybody’s faults, but hey, that’s kinda the fun.

Today I want to look at several of the search marketers themselves. To see how well they are branded in the search results and see if we can pinpoint any gaps. In Monday’s post I added a disclaimer that you might want to read if you feel you or someone you love is being attacked. They’re not.

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Yesterday i was in the Universal and Blended Search session at SES San Jose. Shashi Seth from Cooliris provided what i thought was a rather interesting statistic: in the typical search, searchers hit the “next page” link less than 20% of the time.

This means that less than 20% of searches actually get to the second page of search results. This leads to two important questions.

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As I conclude this series on Destination Search Engine Marketing it’s important to answer the question “why?” Why go through the hassle of of building a Destination Website? Obviously, there are thousands of successful online businesses that but don’t operate anything that could be considered a “Destination”. If they are successful, should you really go through the extra effort yourself?

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The first six building blocks in creating a Destination Website; expert information, usability, website design, unique value proposition, time and presence, and voice are all things that we, more or less, have direct control over. The exception is time. We don’t control time but we do control how we build up our presence over time.

Trust and credibility are also partly in our control but also one of the most difficult things to achieve. We determine whether we move forward in a trustworthy way, and whether or not to act in a credible manner, but no matter how hard we try, we cannot wish those two things into existence. We cannot force someone else to trust us. We cannot tell someone to find us credible and expect them to do so on our word.

We can go about doing all we can to build both trust and credibility, but, in the end, whether we are trusted or not lies not with our own efforts but other people’s perceptions. If you spend months and years showing you can be trusted and proving that you’re credible, but one one knows or believes it to be true, then you just aren’t. These are not physical things that can be touched, they simply must be understood to be true.

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One of the easiest ways to set yourself apart from your competitors is by creating a distinct voice through your written content. Whether you realize it or not, every website has a voice. For most businesses, the tone of their online voice is that of whoever wrote their content. Whether written by the site owner, an in-house writer, an SEO, a sub-contracted copywriter, or any such combination, each has contributed to creating the voice of the website.

Unfortunately, this type of collaboration also makes most content virtually indistinguishable from one website to another. Instead of creating a unique voice that is distinct throughout the site, what is created is a voice too diluted to be heard.

That’s not to say that the copy is bad. On the contrary, the copy can be quite effective at educating and engaging the visitor and driving them to the conversion point. Voiceless copy isn’t necessarily bland copy.

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If there is one thing that most online businesses need to understand, it’s this: you can’t become an authority overnight. This is especially crucial to come to terms with when you realize that it takes a certain element of “authority” to compete against other websites in the search results.

The whole point of Destination Search Engine Marketing is about achieving rankings because you have earned the right to be there, rather than having outsmarted the search engine algorithm. In non-competitive areas, achieving top rankings often doesn’t take much effort. But when you’re targeting keywords in more competitive fields you’re going up against other websites that have already established themselves in that space. Many of those competitors are are, in fact, the authority for those keywords.

That’s not to say that these sites can’t be uprooted from their firmly established top positions, but to do so you’re going to have to prove that your site is of even higher value to your target audience. And to do that you’ll have to do more than just show up on the playing field.

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In its early years, the Internet was the great leveler of businesses. Anybody could jump online, start a business and hope to make a little money. Today, it’s not so easy as it was, but unfortunately people still have that same mindset. It doesn’t take a lot of money to start a successful business online, but it still does take a plan. And that’s where many online businesses go wrong.

I talk to many website owners who are unable to put to words what it is that distinguishes them from their competitors. They don’t know what makes them unique or have a reason why someone should buy from them rather than somebody else. This is a shame.

Running a business online is really no different than anywhere else. Just because it’s easier to “build your store” doesn’t mean that you’ll be successful. You still need to create a solid business plan and develop a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) if you really want to succeed online. In fact, this is where building a business online may actually be more difficult than offline.

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Just because you have a well-designed site doesn’t mean that it is sufficiently usable. The web is littered with great looking sites that have a whole mess of usability problems. But it’s also true that just because a website employs effective usability strategies that it’s not necessarily pleasing on the eyes.

We’ve all seen those direct mail-like landing pages, the ones that scroll on forever telling you just how great the product is that you need to buy. Usually they have a big red heading, some pictures, testimonials and a lot of words highlighted to draw your eye to them. As ugly goes, these pages pretty much invented the thing, but you know what, they are extremely effective. And a lot of that is in their simplicity.

But these pages are meant to do one thing, and one thing only. Get a conversion. They are designed to sell the visitor on something. On the other hand, as we have been discussing over the past couple of weeks, a Destination Website is meant to engage the visitor. Yes, they can also sell products or services, but they go about it in an entirely different way.

The design of a website is an important aspect of building a destination that people want to return to time and time again. But don’t go out and spend all kinds of money for the most current, up-to-date website design with all the whistles and bells. Stop for a second to truly consider what kind of website design you really need.

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Over the last two posts I discussed the importance of expert information in building a Destination Website. I also outlined seven different types of expert information that can be used in providing quality information to your audience. Building a Destination Website is all about serving your audience. It’s about finding what they are looking for in a website and providing it in excellence.

I’ve written quite extensively about website usability in the past so I won’t re-iterate everything I’ve said again, but usability is one of the key aspects in building a Destination Website.

Running SEO campaigns that don’t address usability concerns is like running radio and TV promos to drive people to a store that is unfinished. The traffic being driven may not be a total loss, but you certainly aren’t getting the full value out of each customer. Many won’t find what they are looking for, others will be frustrated trying to check out, and some may turn around the moment they walk in the door. Usability addresses those issues to ensure each customer has a good experience on your website.

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Yesterday I started a new series on Destination Search Engine Marketing, discussing the first of the seven building blocks in creating a Destination Website: Expert Information. Before I move on to the second building block I wanted to discuss the different types of expert information which can be added to your website.

There are a number of different types of expert information that can be developed for your website as a means of providing your visitors with additional, quality content. Depending on your site, some types of types of expert information are more applicable than others and not all will be a good fit for you. Each site must be evaluated to determine what kind of expert information will best serve the audience’s needs and expectations. By finding ways to add additional expert information to your site you’ll begin to build a site that can stand up above the competition.

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