If Internet Marketing Was a Football Team: Position-by-Position Breakdown

September 2, 2010 By Dan Bischoff Leave a Comment

College Football is back tonight with Utah vs. Pittsburgh. Other local games this weekend include BYU vs. Washington and Utah State vs. Oklahoma. Everything is right in the world again.

In honor of college football’s return, here are the position-by-position starters if Internet marketing strategies made up a football team:

Head Coach – Analytics and A/B Testing

The head coach analyzes everything and makes changes to improve. Analytics and testing gives you the stats, tells you what is working, where people are coming from, how long they’ve been on the site, what is bringing traffic and what converts best. Through analytics and testing, you can tweak strategies to be more successful.


Assistant Coach – Competitive Analysis

The assistant coach often scouts out the competition to know how to beat the bad guys. A detailed competitive analysis will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors so you can know how and where to strike.


Offensive Starters – Building the Brand, Getting Exposure and Outbound Marketing

Quarterback – SEO

Arguably, the quarterback position is the most important position on the field. Top quarterbacks win games despite weaknesses in other areas of the team. If you get top rankings for the right keywords, you will get more website traffic and sales. All-Pro SEO services will almost instantly make you a major player in your industry. Quarterbacks are also the face of a team. Similarly, organic natural results act as the face of your company


Running Back – Conversion Optimization

There are crucial times in any football game where a team needs 1 yard for a first down or a few inches to score a touchdown. A dependable running back will get that extra yardage almost every time. Conversion optimization plays that role for your website. Once you get that extra website traffic, you need dependable website conversion principles to take that visitor into the end zone.


Fullback – Web Design

Fullbacks are often the lead blocker that clears the way for the running back to get that extra yard. Good SEO Web design clears the way for everything else to work right.


Wide Receiver — Social Media Marketing

Fast wide receivers can change the game with one quick-striking score. Good social media marketing using viral video, infographics, blog posts, etc., can quickly send a lot of traffic and create a ton of exposure in a short period of time. Social media can be a game changer just like a flashy wide receiver that blows past the defense.


Tight End – Online Public Relations

Tight ends are instrumental in blocking for the quarterback and running backs. But they also consistently score touchdowns and get first downs in tight situations. Tight ends are critical in clutch moments whether it’s a run or pass play. Online public relations have the same dependability. Online PR doesn’t always results in a home run, but it does consistently bring good traffic quality links. And sometimes online PR scores a touchdown by getting the attention of big blogs and publications. Online PR is the go-to weapon in tight situations when you need good links, and more traffic and exposure.


Offensive Line – Keyword Research

The offensive line is the foundation of every football team. They give the quarterback time to throw and open holes for the running backs. Games are won and lost in the trenches, and they are similar won and lost with the right or wrong keyword research. Every search strategy revolves around picking the right keywords to target. Targeting the right keywords will make you a lot of money. The wrong keywords will keep you guessing and will lose you money.


Defensive Starters, Protecting Your Online Brand

Defensive Line – Reputation Management

The defensive line is the literally first line of defense. Any offense will roll over a team with a pansy D-line. For online marketing, this is similar to reputation management. It’s the foundation to defending your brand online.


Line Backer – Link Building

I chose this mostly because linebackers and link building have the same abbreviation: LB. So, you can come up with your own analogy on this one.


Corner Back – Social Media Profiles

Corner backs protect the pass and are sometimes the secret weapon on a corner blitz to reach the quarterback. I compare this to social media profiles. An active profile that provides valuable information and brings in fans, is a big part of protecting your brand and company. Social profiles are usually found high in the search engines for a company’s name. Plus, social media is all the buzz right now. In the sports world, corner backs are usually the guys with all the hype.


Safety – PPC

The Safety position is self-explanatory. The Safety has a lot of roles, but is there to basically defend wherever things break down. That’s what PPC is for. A good mix of PPC with your SEO will make sure you get the right exposure and traffic while you work on getting your SEO rankings where you want them.


Kicker/Punter – Local Search and Maps Optimization

A good kicker can nail a field goal in clutch situations or pin a team near the end zone on a good punt. Local Internet marketing places your website in the right spot for local shoppers to find your business and buy your products.


Filed Under: SEO, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

SEO for eCommerce Part Two: Poor Site Structure

September 1, 2010 By Dustin Williams Leave a Comment

You have been waiting for it all summer and now it is finally here! My follow up post to SEO for eCommerce Part One: Content Woes. Before I go into details on the next biggest problem with eCommerce sites and search indexing, I will take a few minutes to reply to some of the questions that were asked after the last post.

Question: Can you copy website content and then edit it?

Yes you can copy website content and edit it. If you edit the content that was copied enough, then it will become unique content and can be used on your website.

Question: What do I recommend for link building to eCommerce sites that don’t have real linkable content?

The trick to getting links is to generate content that is “linkable.” Content can be generated through blogs, articles, buyer’s guides and knowledge bases. These types of features on eCommerce sites are great for building “linkable” content and they can also help you stand out as the expert in your industry.

Question: How different do the descriptions have to be?

Sometimes all it takes is some rewording of a couple of sentences to make product descriptions unique enough. One easy way to get unique content is to read the manufacturer’s description and then write it from your memory. In most cases you will not be able to remember everything word for word and your version will be different enough from the manufacturer’s.

Thank you everyone for your questions and comments. Now I am going to describe the next problem that occurs frequently with eCommerce websites: poor site structure.

Poor Site Structure

The problem of poor site structure occurs with eCommerce sites when the navigation of the site makes it difficult for search engine crawlers to find the product pages of the website. Standard eCommerce website designs will employ a category and subcategory system that helps the visitor to browse by narrowing their options until they find what they are looking for. The flaw in such a system is that it requires that a search engine crawler travel too deep into the site to find the product pages.

How do You Know if a Crawler is Traveling too Deep?

One indicator is the Page Rank score of the page. You can find the Page Rank score of any page on a website by simply visiting the page with the Google toolbar installed on your browser. Pages that are not too deep will usually have a Page Rank score. There are other factors that could cause a page to not have a Page Rank score so this indicator isn’t 100% reliable. My rule of thumb for determining if a page is too deep is to count how many pages I have to visit before getting to the product page. If it is more than three pages deep then it is too deep for the search engine crawler.

How do You Correct the Site Structure?

The simple answer to the question about correcting the site structure is to tell you to make your product pages no more than 3 pages deep. But I know that this isn’t always a simple fix. Some websites are huge with millions of products. Creating a site structure that consists of one level of categories and then the products would create pages with thousands of links. This is where it will require a carefully planned link structure.

  • Code the main site navigation using SEO friendly CSS so that you can include expanding sub-navigation menus.
  • Include featured product links on the homepage and main category pages of the site to promote better indexing of popular products.
  • Use blog posts, articles and buyer’s guides to link to specific product pages.
  • Add a quick bookmarking widget to your product pages so they can easily be bookmarked and shared on social networking sites.
  • Include an HTML sitemap (or multiple sitemaps depending on the size of the website).

The main thing to remember with site structure is that you want to make it easy for both a search engine crawler and a customer to find any product you sell on your website. Go through your site and see how easy it is for you to find your products. Ask friends and other family members to do the same. They can give you good feedback and help you find places you could change to make your eCommerce site both user and search engine friendly.

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5 Ways Clients Trip Up Their Own SEO

August 31, 2010 By Rick Hardman Leave a Comment

One the largest hurdles in getting a website to rank well and make money for a client, can be the client themselves. It is hard to watch a well-meaning client get in their own way and not know it. For that reason I am writing this post to help them understand what they can do (and not do) to make sure that they get the most out of their money when they hire an seo firm.

Choosing the right keywords

One of the most common mistakes that I see clients make when working with an seo company, or doing their own search engine optimization, is picking the wrong keywords. It is easy to become blinded by massive projected traffic numbers instead of focusing on the real number that matters – sales.

I have seen this happen repeatedly. Let me set this up for you. Here is a mock phone conversation after the SEO company has done some keyword research and recommended the appropriate keywords to the client:

Client:  “I would like to target keywords x,y,z.”
SEO Company:  “While the research does show that those will bring traffic, I am not sure those are the right keywords to target for sales.”
Client:  “I know my industry and those are the keywords I need to show up for.”
SEO Company:  “Okay.”

…After months of hard work that has resulted in top rankings for the client’s given keywords:

Client:  “I am not seeing a good enough return on my investment with you to justify continuing. My sales have not increased significantly and it certainly is not enough to cover my contract with you, let alone make money. You have been working on this for several months now and I am not seeing how search engine optimization has helped me at all.”
SEO Company:  “Well, we have gotten the top rankings for the keywords you asked for and your traffic has increased, but perhaps we should look at now optimizing for the other keywords that we recommended.”
Client:  “No, I don’t think that will help.”

The mistake clients make with keywords is demanding that the SEO marketing company target their efforts on broad keywords that will not translate into sales. A better strategy is to start with a list of longer tail keywords to target. These keywords are the ones that will have a much higher conversion rate and they almost always are easier to rank for. You are much more likely to see a positive ROI by using this strategy.


Not making the Recommended Changes To Their Site

There will always need to be changes made to a site for optimization purposes. One of the ways that a client gets in their own way is in their refusal or slow implementation of those changes. It is important that once some recommendations have been made, the changes are made as soon as possible. The longer it takes to make the changes the slower the rankings will come and the longer it will be to see a return on the investment.

Resist Adding Content

In order to get rankings for certain keywords it is necessary to have content that revolves around the keywords that you are trying to rank for. Often there will be recommendations to add or alter content to the site. If content is recommended as part of an SEO campaign, it is important to add it. if some alterations are recommended, then make those. If you are concerned with the recommendation, discuss it and come to some compromise that will work for you and the SEO firm, but do not resist the change all together.

Communication

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate! One of the most frustrating things for an Internet marketing company is to have a client’s campaign slowed or stopped due to a lack of response from a client. Understand that if you are not answering their emails and phone calls, then they are likely at a standstill on your SEO campaign.

On the other hand, some clients are a little too eager to communicate. As a client, you should feel comfortable to call or email them whenever you need to. But remember they only have a certain amount of time each day to do the work, and the more hours they spend on the phone with you or replying to your emails, the less time they will have to get the work done.

Micromanaging

It is important to understand the strategy that your SEO company is using, but if you are a client that must approve every little move, then you are getting in the way. Remember that they are the experts and they have done this more than once.

By micromanaging you may cause delays because they are waiting for your approval. You have a business to run. Do your due diligence before hiring any Internet marketing company and then trust that the company you have hired knows what they are doing and can get you the results that you are seeking. Discuss with them what kinds of things you want to approve and then let them do their job.

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: , , , , ,

SEO.com Launches Local Search Service with Boostability.com Partnership; on Track for Record Year

August 30, 2010 By Dan Bischoff Leave a Comment

SEO.com teams up with Boostability.com to offer small and medium-sized businesses the services and technology to efficiently leverage local SEO services that drive top rankings, increase website traffic and significantly boosts sales.

SALT LAKE CITY — Up until now, SEO.com’s clientele was mostly made up of larger corporations and businesses with a bigger marketing budget. With one partnership, that’s all changed.

SEO.com has partnered with Boostability.com, a local Internet marketing firm with a proprietary SEO platform, to offer clients Google maps optimization and other local Internet marketing services.

“We’ve been seeking out a partner that could be a service provider for small, local accounts,” said Chris Knudsen, vice president of marketing. “We’ve found that in Boostability. They have great software, an equally great background in search, and a management team and product that will deliver results.”

The affiliation comes after SEO.com experienced multiple years of rapid growth and is on track for a record year. In the last two years, the SEO company increased its monthly revenue by 600 percent and went from 12 employees to nearly 70 – and is still aggressively hiring.

This April, SEO.com was named the No. 2 SEO firm by Website Magazine. The SEO company has been listed among the top 10 SEO firms in the country by PromotionWorld, and one of the top 25 fastest growing companies in Utah by the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum two years running, including No. 6 in 2010. SEO.com also has been named among the Emerging Elite by MountainWest Capital Network.

Through this partnership, SEO.com is now offering local search services (including local SEO and maps optimization) ranging from $200 to $1500 a month, in combination with its proven enterprise offerings. Boostability will fulfill the service for SEO.com and will greatly benefit from the addition of many new clients every year.

“Given our incredible lead flow and reputation, we will now be able to service thousands of new accounts though this partnership,” said Nelson James, president of SEO.com. “We are pleased about being able to provide the value and benefit that comes from SEO to even more businesses in need.”

“We’re excited to be a part of what SEO.com is doing, and to help both sides continue to grow,” said Travis Thorpe, CEO of Boostability. “They will be able to leverage our proprietary technology and we’ll benefit by getting more customers as a part of their brand.”

About Boostability.com
Boostability provides SEO technology and fulfillment services for agencies, media companies, and phone book (yellow pages) providers. Using proprietary technology it delivers cost-effective and scalable SEO solutions.

About SEO.com
SEO.com is a search marketing firm that delivers a big ROI for its clients by driving traffic to their websites through aggressive search engine optimization, pay per click management, and social media marketing. SEO.com then turns those visitors into sales through search-optimized Web design and conversion optimization. Clients range from small startups to Fortune 100 companies.

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Building Tracking URLs for Google Analytics

August 26, 2010 By Scott Smoot Leave a Comment

This tactic is not really new. In fact, it’s quite old by Internet and SEO standards (being a couple years now). Nevertheless, I see the problem of bad data flowing into Google analytics with enough regularity that I think this deserves some review.

Don’t Blindly Trust your Data

Too often, webmasters and even Internet marketers put too much trust into the data that their Google Analytics accounts are reporting; especially if they see traffic increasing.

For example, I recently ran across an account that looked like it just exploded with additional visits and revenue from organic sources.

From every angle I was looking at, it simply looked like everything was working the way it should. Organic traffic was up, PPC was up, even direct traffic and referral traffic was looking great.

However, it was just too good to let it go without investigation. It wasn’t until I looked at the PPC accounts that I noticed anything was wrong. The PPC account was turned on the very same day that the traffic started to spike. In fact, the traffic graphs were pretty much identical, showing a strong correlation between the PPC being turned on and the traffic we saw coming in.

It was clear that something was off. WAY off. But was it Google’s fault? Not really. Turns out their PPC wasn’t being associated with their account, effectively skewing the organic results.

Now we get to the fun part, where I fixed the problem. In order to make sure that the traffic was pure coming into Google analytics, I changed all of the URLs in their PPC account to tracking URLs, using Google’s URL builder. Let’s look at how we build these URL’s.

Google Analytics and Tracking URLs

The good news is that this is a really automatic process, and only requires a few bits of information (once you get the hang of it, you may not even need to use the builder). You’ll need to input the following information:

  • Website URL – Input your desired landing page URL
  • Campaign Source – Type in where your visits will be coming from. If it’s going to be Yahoo’s PPC, then type in Yahoo.
  • Campaign Medium – Here you want to the medium that is sending the traffic to your site. If it’s a banner ad, then type in “banner”. If it’s cost per click advertising with Bing or Yahoo (or even Google), then type in “cpc”.
  • Campaign Name – Type a name that will help you distinguish the traffic from other campaigns and stay organized.

The other two options, Campaign Term and Campaign Content will allow you to distinguish a keyword you want associated with the particular landing page and the content of the ad used.

Results

Once I fixed the URLs and inputted them into the PPC campaign, the Analytics data seemed to return to normal. Note how the traffic drastically changed once the change was made:

Other Applications

Sometimes, when I share this awesome URL builder with others, they think it’s just for PPC purposes. It’s actaully robust enough to handle just about any marketing effort. Here are some common uses:

  • Banner Ads
  • Newsletters
  • Email Marketing
  • PDF Files and Brochures
  • Sponsored listings (not paid links!)
  • Social Media campaigns (such as twitter tweets)

If you have any other ideas on how to use this nifty, sometimes underrated tool, leave a comment.

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