Posts Tagged ‘SEM Discussions & Blogs’

We once had a client complain that they didn’t know if we were doing anything for them. I guess the ranking improvements they were seeing wasn’t enough of a clue. That complaint only happened once. We realized then that there was a breakdown in communications between us and our clients and instituted measures to insure that it would never happen again. I’ll explain more on that later.

The great thing about the SEO industry, or any online industry really, is that you don’t have to be local to handle clients. In fact, most SEOs get contracts from all over the country and even overseas. Because of the distance I don’t often meet clients in person. I can count on one hand the number of clients that I’ve met face-to-face over the past nine years.

But being distant from your clients can have its disadvantages. Because the client can’t “swing by” the office when they are in your part of town, it creates an additional burden to ensure efficient communication methods are in place.

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Let’s face it, in a world where almost every conceivable metric of analyzing your website traffic is available to you, the only metric that really truly matters is conversions. Click through rates, page views, time spent on site, number of pages read, entrance and exit points, abandonment; all of these metrics are fantastic, but if you’re not using them to improve your conversion rates, well then, you’re simply not using them.

Most people look at their website as a whole but in reality it is merely a collection of parts. These parts (web pages) are essentially individual steps—or stepping stones—that should lead your visitors to a specific goal: the conversion. If all of your steps are working properly, you should see an increase in conversion rates and sales. If your steps are broken or lead your visitors to the wrong thing at the wrong time, then you’re giving qualified visitors an opportunity to exit before the get what they came for.

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Recently Stoney made the decision (and a wise decision it was), to hire an SEO Apprentice. Having been the sole SEO here at PPM I knew that this would be a bit of an adjustment for me, but one that is very much welcome.

SEO, especially technical Second Generation SEO can be a very isolating craft. IR Dorks are simply in short supply and I rarely have anyone to talk shop with. Sure I spend a good deal of time collaborating on marketing issues, discussing industry trends and such, but when it comes to the really technical stuff (the part I really enjoy), I am an island unto myself. Not that my co-workers are uninterested, but as soon as I start to speak to my colleagues in “searchengineese” their eyes glaze over and a distant expression occupies their faces. Like I said an isolating craft.

At the beginning of this week however I began sharing my corner of the office with “Rob the Apprentice” who now divides his time between general work tasks assigned by Stoney and working through the training program that I developed for him. The program is a curriculum of sorts packed with a mountain of learning and practical application exercises (fortunately before I was an SEO I was a curriculum designer and classroom facilitator). The learning program is very thorough and should equip him with the basic skills and experience required to apply the principles of our unique SEO methodology. Of course he has the tremendous benefit of one-on-one guidance from the resident Search Ninja to assist his quest for excellence.

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I’m fascinated by the way Digg works, specifically the whole idea of burying article. What are the reasons Diggers bury articles? Well, according to Digg they are:

1. Duplicate Story
2. Spam
3. Wrong topic
4. Inaccurate
5. OK, this is lame

Let’s take these one at a time:

Duplicate story: Reasonable enough. If the story is a dupe of another recently dugg article then there is cause for it to be buried. Better, though is for Digg admins to verify if a story is duplicate and simply remove it. End of story.

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For the last week or so I have been secretly compiling a list of interesting things that I overhear at the office. My criteria is very simple: anytime something is said which if taken out of context, is certain to raise an eyebrow; it gets put on the list. To my colleagues, who may be sweating bullets over this post: put your mind at ease; I have only assigned a gender to each comment. No names will be referenced in an attempt to protect the innocent (or not so innocent as the case may be).

she’s wearing granny panties…

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SEOMoz’s recent release of Search Engine Ranking Factors Version 2 has generated a lot of buzz within the SEO industry. More accurately it has received tremendous praise and is being hailed as the “final answer” to search optimization for Google. After carefully reviewing this hopeful work which is said to;

“…represent the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization”

which:

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Over at Search Engine Guide I added two blog posts this week. The first, Cookie Crumblers Corrupt Conclusive Counts, (cute title, eh?) is about how using cookies to track visitors may be over-inflating your stats. The second, posted today, is about how SlingMedia has found an unintended audience for their product… and one that will open the doors to far more sales they they probably ever imagined.

Check them out and come back here and post your comments.

Rand Fishkin and Aaron Wall often amuse me. Here are two of the biggest names in the SEO industry, both responsible for helping businesses improve their business models, conversions, and overall success. But both routinely ask others to help them with their own business models.

No, this isn’t a criticism, just something I find amusing.

Yesterday Aaron posted his thoughts on changing his own business model, specifically whether he should continue to update the SEO book and/or sell it for more money. Good questions for any business to be asking. But even more amusing is Aaron complaining about the “wankers” who simply want stuff for little or no money. Does anybody else see the irony in that?

I commented on Aaron’s post:

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There is a great deal of talk within the search marketing world concerning the future introduction of personalization factors into search as a way to improve SERPS relevancy. Many regard this as the death of SEO. It is reasoned that if each user is getting a unique and personalized search experience; the SEO cannot deduce the unique personalized signals used by search engines to help sort the search results. Furthermore, that any SEO techniques employed to optimize a web page would probably boost rankings for only a handful of searchers.

I strongly disagree. In fact I see personalization as ushering in a new era of SEO, in which search optimizers are able to target specific audiences with great precision. This will be, as Stoney has so eloquently defined, the era of Destination Marketing.

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Find out yesterday today!

OK, so my first column on Search Engine Land was supposed to go up yesterday but due to a technical snafu it never did. But it’s up now!

So head on over and find out what Destination Marketing is all about.